4 days Ago By Joshua Frey-Sam
The Winnipeg Jets understand bad games are bound to happen. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * The Winnipeg Jets understand bad games are bound to happen. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? The Winnipeg Jets understand bad games are bound to happen.
Such is the nature of an 82-game regular-season schedule. Now the focus is ensuring the last two outings were just a speed bump, not the beginning of a concerning trend. Lynne Sladky / The Associated Press Winnipeg Jets head coach Scott Arniel ramped up the intensity in Monday’s practice after the Jets lost their second straight game on the weekend.
The Jets returned home after a three-game road trip that began with another solid performance against the New York Rangers and ended with a pair of stinkers against the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers, where they were outscored 9-1 and dominated in consecutive losses. After an off day on Sunday, head coach Scott Arniel ramped up the intensity in Monday’s practice session by implementing a drill to stoke the competitive fire in his players and sharpen their skills around the net. “We try not to waste a practice.
There’s stuff designed in every drill that we do that’s going to have resemblance to what happens in the games,” said Arniel. “Sometimes you just do a drill like that, it’s twofold: one is the compete, the second part is scoring goals. We only got one in our last two games, so it means that it’s those under-pressure, duress, rebounds, scramble moments — the greasy goals — that you got to score, and so that’s why that drill is set up.
” The response and the attention to detail, Arniel said, was exactly what he was looking for out of his players, who are amid their first losing streak of the season after a historic start to the campaign. There is no panic from the group, nor do they feel a need to increase the urgency following a two-game slide this early in the season. There is, however, an agreement that everyone needs to improve on the little things that will lend to better execution in games.
“We didn’t play our best, the Tampa game and the Florida game ...
even the Ranger game we really didn’t play our best,” said Mark Scheifele. “That happens. You’re gonna go through stretches in the season where things aren’t going well, and things were going so well for us, so you just have to kind of take a step back and know that this league is hard.
“This league is good. You’re gonna come up against good teams, and you got to be at your A-game at all times, and even when you don’t have it, you got to find a way to make it hard on them.” The Jets (15-3-0) will look to do just that when they get another crack at the defending Stanley Cup champions today when they host the Panthers (12-5-1) at Canada Life Centre (7 p.
m). “I think it’s the perspective and how you approach these games,” captain Adam Lowry said about the importance of not letting their two-game slide reach three. “I think we lose two in a row, it’s more about the process and how we got those results versus how we’ve gotten the results in a lot of the other games.
“There (are) areas of our game we want to continue to work on, there (are) areas of our game we want to continue to improve upon, so, I think if you get too focused on the results ...
you put a little too much pressure on yourself. I think it’s one of those ones where you kind of have to approach every game in a vacuum and then take the things you learn from it and put it into the next one.” The club’s time at home will last just one game, making it all the more important to get back on track before it leaves for its longest road trip of the season: a six-game stretch that spans 11 days in Pittsburgh, Nashville, Minnesota, Los Angeles, Vegas and Dallas.
“I feel like we haven’t been home a whole lot,” Lowry said. “It’s great, we love playing in front of the fans in Winnipeg. It’s nice to be home for a few days, but you want to have a good feeling going into a long road trip, and you don’t want to get too far ahead of yourself.
Chris O’Meara / The Associated Press Winnipeg Jets centre Mark Scheifele on the team’s two-game losing streak in Florida: “We didn’t play our best.” “But a lot of really good teams on that road trip coming up, and it’s a tough part of the schedule, but so far we’ve risen to the occasion this year and we’ve got a lot of belief in this group, so look forward to coming to the rink (today), having a good morning skate and then getting out there and competing against the Panthers.” Injury report Defenceman Logan Stanley was still not skating on Monday as he continues to nurse a mid-body injury that forced him to miss the club’s recent road trip.
There is no clear timetable on his return to game action. “He’s still going to be a little bit here,” said Arniel. “He’s gonna come on the road trip with us but he won’t (be) skating here yet for probably another four or five days.
” Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. Meanwhile, fellow blue-liner Ville Heinola is getting closer to returning, Arniel confirmed.
The 23-year-old has taken another significant step in his recovery by shedding the non-contact jersey and participating in five-on-five drills. He is working back from an infection in the ankle that he had surgically repaired last fall. “He’s coming.
Ville, we finally got him into the heavy contact, we got a couple on the road — not that we practised a whole lot — but today I thought was a really good one,” Arniel said. “We got a decision to make with him. We’ll talk to him and see how we move forward here.
“We want to get him in some games sooner than later, we just got to find out what the best course of it is. If the docs are 100 per cent ready for us to move forward with them in the games and talk to him about the best scenario.” joshua.
[email protected] X: @jfreysam Josh Frey-Sam reports on sports and business at the .
Josh got his start at the paper in 2022, just weeks after graduating from the Creative Communications program at Red River College. He’s reported primarily on amateur teams and athletes in sports and writes a weekly real estate feature for the business section. .
Every piece of reporting Josh produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the ‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about , and . Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism.
If you are not a paid reader, please consider . Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Josh Frey-Sam reports on sports and business at the . Josh got his start at the paper in 2022, just weeks after graduating from the Creative Communications program at Red River College. He’s reported primarily on amateur teams and athletes in sports and writes a weekly real estate feature for the business section.
. Every piece of reporting Josh produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the ‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about , and .
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider . Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism.
Thank you for your support. Advertisement Advertisement.
