Jets report

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/10/2011 (4164 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

— BACK IN THE SADDLE: Head coach Claude Noel said Tuesday that centre Jim Slater, the man who leads the team with three goals in six games but missed Monday’s 2-1 loss to the Rangers, will be available for Thursday’s game in Philadelphia.

“He’s ready to go, I think,” said Noel. “I was just talking with him. I have to talk to the trainer first, but I think he’s ready to go or close.

“He’s a good player, a dependable guy for us who plays with some heart.”

 

— THE VISOR DEBATE: The eye injury suffered by Flyers captain Chris Pronger the other night — he took a stick in the eye and could be out for up to three weeks — has opened the discussion again about making visors mandatory for all players.

“When Chris comes back, he’ll be wearing a visor,” Flyers GM Paul Holmgren told The Philadelphia Daily News. “We made it mandatory in the American Hockey League. To me, it’s not an issue — players should wear them. Obviously, some of these guys have been around a long time and for whatever reason they don’t want to wear one.

“I think the improvements with the visor over the last number of years, compared to what it was 10 or 15 years ago, are tremendous. I don’t think the visor is a big issue.”

— SOLDIER ON: Now without Pronger, Flyers’ head coach Peter Laviolette spoke of the veteran presence in the room: “I don’t think anyone is going to take Chris’ captain’s duties. We have good leadership on the team. Guys like Danny Briere and Kimmo (Timonen) have been captains before. Jaromir Jagr’s provided terrific leadership. Claude Giroux. We’ve got guys. We’ve got this covered. We’ll miss him, but we’ll get by, we’ll get through this.”

 

— BOX WOES: There’s certainly a correlation between penalties, penalty-killing and results.

The Jets, in their first eight games, have produced just two outings in which they have not allowed a power-play goal.

Those are the team’s only wins, against Pittsburgh and Carolina.

The rest are marked with some poor penalty killing, some poor luck, and all are losses.

Monday, in their 2-1 loss to the Rangers, Noel had no issues with his penalty-killers. The Rangers scored twice with the man advantage, one with a brilliant re-direct and the other courtesy of a centring pass that went off a Winnipeg skate.

“You can’t give up (five) power plays or whatever the numbers were last night and expect to win,” Noel said. “We got one, they got (five). How do you manage that?”

Winnipeg has given its opponents 12 power plays in the last two games.

— Tait-Campbell