Preparation the key

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This article was published 01/01/2022 (1380 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

LAS VEGAS — Like pretty much everybody flying into Las Vegas on Saturday, the Winnipeg Jets were filled with wide-eyed anticipation as they gazed at the scene below.

But it wasn’t the casinos, glitzy shows, balmy weather, notorious nightlife or high-end eateries that had them licking their lips.

“Very excited. We know the whole team is excited to get playing games again. It’s felt like forever since we played a game,” Jets centre Mark Scheifele told reporters just before boarding the charter to head south with his teammates.

No doubt. Welcome back, NHL regular-season.

Sunday’s matinee against the red-hot Golden Knights will be Winnipeg’s first game in exactly two weeks. Five straight have been postponed due to pandemic-related reasons, and that has left a Groundhog Day-feeling hanging around the 14-11-5 club. There’s been practise, practise and even more practise under interim coach Dave Lowry.

“It’s tough to mimic a regular season game. It’s hard. You just don’t have the bodies in practice to really emulate it. But we had some good skates, some long skates, we had some tough practices, so we did our best job to try and prepare for a game,” said Scheifele.

Now, they finally get to see if they can pick up where they left off following a 4-2 victory over St. Louis way back on Dec. 19. Standing in their way is a 22-12-0 Vegas club that has won 10 of its last 12 games to jump into top spot in both the Pacific Division and the Western Conference. They have already played twice this week, with victories over Los Angeles and Anaheim.

“I think your preparation is key. We’ve got to make sure that we have a good warmup. Going against a team that’s now played a couple of games. They’re back into the swing of things against us, who haven’t played in two weeks. It’s all based on preparation and we know that we’ve got to be ready right from the get-go,” Scheifele said of the immediate task at hand.

“It’s not going to be anything like practice. It’s going to be fast. It’s going to be a tough game, so we’ve just got to be prepared, we’ve got to get ready and ramp ourselves up and get ready for a tough team.”

All this time off has done the Jets some good on the health front. Only Blake Wheeler and Evgeny Svechnikov remain out with injuries, and the latter is very close to a return. Svechnikov had his first full-contact practice Saturday, but won’t play as this three-game trip gets underway. He could be an option for Tuesday in Arizona and/or Thursday in Colorado.

“I feel a lot better. Just excited to be out on the ice with the group of boys and get back to it. I’m missing a little bit. It will take a little bit (of time). Get back to work,” said the 25-year-old winger, who has eight points in 28 games so far this season.

Svechnikov suffered a knee injury on Dec. 17 against Washington and would have missed a lot more than the one game (so far) had the Jets previously planned schedule not been abruptly paused.

“I got tripped down close to the bench, tripped down and you can’t really see it. But my knee went fully inside. So I got kind of lucky, I would say. I thought it would be a lot worse, but now everything is better. I’m working at it, doing rehab and hopefully, I will be back soon,” said Svechnikov, who believes he dodged a bit of a bullet.

“The way I went down, it was kind of similar to how I tore my other ACL and something popped. So, I was kind of worried about that. But the way that I fell, it wasn’t bad. So I took another shift and it didn’t feel great and I kind of shut it down. It felt fine, in that moment, because your body is still hot and everything. The next morning, I wake up and it’s not good. Then I knew that something (was wrong). I didn’t know what exactly, so I had to do an MRI and everything was fine (structurally). Like I said, I got lucky. It was pretty bad.”

With Svechnikov being given a couple more days to recover, Lowry is planning to use the following forward lines against Vegas: Scheifele between Nikolaj Ehlers and Paul Stastny; Pierre-Luc Dubois with Kyle Connor and Jansen Harkins; Adam Lowry with Andrew Copp (fresh out of COVID-19 protocol) and Kristian Reichel; and David Gustafsson with Kristian Vesalainen (also out of COVID protocol) and Dominic Toninato.

That means Cole Perfetti, who just joined the taxi squad following the abrupt cancellation of the World Juniors, won’t skate in his third-ever NHL game quite yet. Perfetti has essentially been a placeholder in practice for Copp, who met the team Saturday in Vegas after being sidelined in Michigan following his positive coronavirus diagnosis on Dec. 21. That included getting some work on the top power play unit.

“If he is going to play, there is probably going to be an opportunity to get him some (power-play) reps,” said Lowry. “What we want to do here right now is get him into a position where he feels comfortable coming into our lineup. We want to get him up to speed, and yes, we have practised the power play the past couple of days. Perfect opportunity to get a look at him there, as well.”

The Jets added Moose backup goalie Arvid Holm to the taxi squad on Saturday, giving them a third netminder to bring on the road in case an emergency arises. They also have an extra forward on the roster right now in CJ Suess (in addition to Perfetti on the taxi squad), and are carrying seven healthy defenceman. Nathan Beaulieu will be a healthy scratch Sunday.

“I think we’re very excited. Just look at our group — a lot of practise time. Guys get tired of practising and they much rather play, just like training camp. You go through the whole process and all they’re doing is looking at the calendar and they just want to play that first game. I really believe that’s exactly what we’re thinking right now,” said Lowry.

“We tried to incorporate drills that were game-like, that would get us up and down the ice a few times. Obviously, the first period is going to be critical. The first shifts are going to be really important for a lot of guys, just to get their feet under them, just to get their hands up to speed and back into a competitive environment where games are for real.”

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg