We’re talking about practice, man

Opinion

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This article was published 04/10/2019 (2166 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NEWARK, N.J. — The Winnipeg Jets are hoping absence makes their game grow stronger.

After seemingly running out of fuel and sputtering down the stretch last season, head coach Paul Maurice and his staff spent the summer trying to figure out how to prevent a repeat occurrence.

One of the big takeaways may surprise you: Spend less time at the rink.

That’s right, the Jets are planning to stay off the ice more than usual this season, which may seem like an odd way to increase their on-ice performance. After all, doesn’t practise make perfect?

But to hear Maurice explain it this week during a season-opening four-game road trip, it appears to be a case of quality over quantity. As a result, the traditional morning skate, especially on the road, may go the way of the dodo bird.

“It is new, for what we’re trying to do,” Maurice said. “We needed to figure out a different way to do this.”

The Jets didn’t have a morning skate Friday in Newark, which is the normal routine when playing on back-to-back nights. However, there wasn’t one Thursday morning at Madison Square Garden, either. Only a handful of players took the ice, including newcomers David Gustafsson and Carl Dahlstrom, backup goalie Laurent Brossoit and injured forward Bryan Little.

“Winnipeg is a different animal. Our travel is different, really, than anybody else’s. We’ve got teams outside of our time zone, in our division and we felt that (last season),” said Maurice.

It was through a combination of sports science and feedback from some of the more established players this off-season a course for a new way of doing things was set for this season. That doesn’t mean everyone simply sleeps in and hangs out at the hotel; it will allow for additional video sessions and meetings to highlight areas in need of improvement.

“I did talk to the captains about it. I’ve never loved the morning skate. I don’t think it’s an important thing.

“It was, 25 years ago, when we used to do it. But it’s changed,” said Maurice in an ode to the days when players didn’t exactly keep themselves in prime physical condition and sometimes needed a skate to shake off the cobwebs.

“It has just evolved. The players are more fit. At the end of the day, it’s all about the players’ prep. We’re gonna work this around till we feel we have the biggest block of our players feeling right at game time.”

Last season, the Jets rarely practised together as a full team in the final couple months, due to a road-heavy schedule that included trips through every time zone. The majority of practices were either cancelled or of the optional variety, leaving little time to work on parts of their game that desperately needed it as they lost their grip on first place in the NHL’s Central Division and then quickly bowed out of the playoffs in the first round.

Maurice is hoping that giving everyone a break from the monotony of morning skates will maximize what they can get out of the practices they do schedule, both in attendance and execution, where more teaching is going to be emphasized.

“We’ve also had a lot of our drivers — and I’ll just use Blake (Wheeler) for an example. He spends a lot during the game, we would take the day off (of practice) for recovery and he would morning skate. We’ve changed some of the ways we practise, so we’re gonna look to get our hockey team (together) on the ice more and eliminate as many of the morning skates as we can,” said Maurice.

“We practise at pace and as hard and as fast as we can. If we’re gonna do it this way, we’re gonna have to dial back what we do. If we put them on the ice in our schedule — we play nine games in 15 days to start the season — we aren’t gonna go as hard. We have to find meaningful things to do on the ice with them.”

Ralph Krueger, now coaching the Buffalo Sabres, was also a bit of an inspiration, according to Maurice. The two men have grown close after coaching together on Team Europe in the 2016 World Cup of Hockey. Krueger had been involved for the past several years as director of Southampton in the English Premier League of soccer.

“I was sitting on the dock talking to Ralph Krueger about his football experience, where they don’t allow those guys to get off the couch in the morning on a game day,” said Maurice.

Of course, all of this is subject to ongoing review by Jets staff, with energy levels constantly being monitored and execution during games a key indicator of whether further changes are required. It can be a fine line between rest and rust, although that shouldn’t be a problem with such a busy start to this season.

“If we feel we’re not getting that then we’ll be back on the ice. We have to find a different way, in Winnipeg, to handle our schedule,” said Maurice.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg