‘This is pretty crazy’

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This article was published 19/12/2014 (3944 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Grant CLITSOME turned to his right and glanced at the four empty lockers next to his in the Winnipeg Jets dressing room.

In order: Trouba… Stuart… Bogosian… Enstrom…

“The scary thing is it’s working its way down the stalls here and I’m the next one,” said the Jets defenceman with a chuckle.

“So I’m a little nervous right now. I’m going to set up a barricade at this stall here so it doesn’t keep moving its way down.”

Yes, the NHL might be working through concerns about an outbreak of the mumps, but the Jets are dealing with a pandemic of their own, as their blue-line corps took another hit on Thursday with the news Mark Stuart will be out until February with a ‘lower-body’ injury.

Stuart exited Tuesday’s win over the Buffalo Sabres after a third-period scrap with Nicolas Deslauriers, taking a couple of shots near the end of the bout that knocked him down before he left the ice in obvious discomfort.

And so in the last few weeks the Jets have lost their top four defencemen, all of whom had been averaging 20 minutes or more per game. That prompted GM Kevin Cheveldayoff to make a move on Thursday, dealing a sixth-round draft pick acquired from Ottawa last year to Carolina in exchange for veteran rearguard Jay Harrison, who has played for Jets head coach Paul Maurice with the Hurricanes and both the Toronto Marlies and Maple Leafs.

Where Harrison fits in the defensive pairings won’t be known until he arrives today, but at Thursday’s practice the duos featured Dustin Byfuglien with Ben Chiarot, Paul Postma and Adam Pardy and Clitsome alongside Julien Brouillette.

“That was clearly not the news we needed to hear,” Maurice said after the workout. “We don’t have a lot of defencemen to spare at this point. But it’s the same line I gave you two or three days ago — this is our adversity, this is what we have to deal with.

“You can get into runs where you’ve got one or two of your top four out for two or three games. But this is quite a bit more significant.”

There was a lot of brave talk Thursday in the Jets dressing room about being able to weather the storm without their top four because of the belief in their defensive system. The Jets, who are 6-1-3 since Enstrom was the first to be felled, have a goals-against average of 2.25 — third best in the NHL heading into Thursday night’s action.

“It’s tough seeing all those guys go down at the same time,” said Pardy. “It’s going to be a little bit of adversity here for us in the back end, but we’ve got a lot of guys who can play and collectively we’re going to come together and make sure we keep doing the job we’re doing. We have a structure in place, a way we want to play and a certain way we want to do things. It’s just a matter of doing that and doing that for an extra few more minutes on the ice. So… nothing different.

“It’s crazy, but that’s hockey. I said to a buddy about two months ago that it’s usually in December when you start seeing guys go down. And sure enough… I wasn’t hoping for it by any means, but injuries happen. There’s really nothing you can do about it.”

Maurice said the club hopes to have Enstrom skating again in early January; Bogosian a few weeks after that. Both Trouba and Stuart are out until February.

So consider this as the Jets prepare for weekend games against Boston and Philadelphia: their No. 1 defensive pairing now features Byfuglien — primarily a forward until the bodies started falling and Chiarot, who was summoned from St. John’s.

“I just put these shot-blockers on the other day,” said Chiarot. “Like Paul said, we can’t afford to have other guys go down. I mean, every team goes through injuries, some sort of adversity — Columbus had six forwards go down earlier in the year — but this is pretty crazy.”

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @WFPEdTait0

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