GAMEDAY: Jets at Avalanche

When the Winnipeg Jets (1-1-0) take to the ice tonight against the Colorado Avalanche, the line-up will have a few adjustments from the one that opened the current three-game road trip on the losing side in Dallas.
Dylan Samberg will see his first action of the regular season tonight, paired with Dylan DeMelo on the Jets blue line.
Axel Jonsson-Fjallby will see his first action in Jets colours as well, skating on a line with Saku Maenalanen and David Gustafsson.
On top of all this, Nikolaj Ehlers is a gametime decision after leaving this morning's pregame skate at Ball Arena early. His ailment isn't related to the shot he blocked off his hand in Dallas, but dates back to the lingering lower-body issue that kept him from participating in a practice last week.
"(Head Athletic Therapist, Rob Milette) will work on him here and we'll see," said associate coach Scott Arniel. "He's just had some things that have been bothering him for a bit, nagging."

The line-up shuffle also means the Jets' defensive pairs will look a bit different.

Samberg's pairing with DeMelo means that Josh Morrissey will have a new partner in Neal Pionk, a look the Jets tried out on a few occasions last season. That leaves Brenden Dillon and Nate Schmidt as the other pair.
Samberg, who played his first 15 NHL games last season, is looking forward to the test of taking on the defending Stanley Cup champions tonight.
"It feels great. Been looking forward to this moment," said Samberg. "I don't think I need to overdo anything. Just keep it simple and play to my strengths, which are getting the puck moving north, playing hard defensively, not giving anybody any time and space and making it hard to play against."
Just as eager to get into action is Jonsson-Fjallby. The 24-year-old said his adjustment to Winnipeg's systems wasn't too overwhelming, as a lot of it is similar to what was used in Washington - where the Stockholm, Sweden product played 23 games last season.

"(Arniel) just told me before practice that I'm playing so try to get my lungs going, get my legs going for tonight," Jonsson-Fjallby said. "Just by watching, when we're good, we're really, really good, and just doing the right things we have a good chance."
Winnipeg's line-up, if Ehlers can play, is expected to look like this:
Connor-Scheifele-Ehlers
Perfetti-Dubois-Wheeler
Barron-Lowry-Appleton
Jonsson-Fjallby-Gustafsson-Maenalanen
Morrissey-Pionk
Dillon-Schmidt
Samberg-DeMelo
The reason for the line-up changes was partly about getting Samberg involved, and partly because of a conversation Arniel had with head coach Rick Bowness - who won't join the Jets on the trip as he continues to recover from COVID-19.
"There's a guy back in Winnipeg that watched the last game three times," laughed Arniel. "We're trying to get some different looks, try some different things. With Axel going in, same as Sammy, we want him to go in, we don't want him to sit."
The Avalanche are 2-1-0 this season and are coming off a 6-3 win over Minnesota on Monday. Head coach Jared Bednar announced that captain Gabriel Landeskog won't be available for the next 12 weeks after he had arthroscopic surgery on his knee.
Landeskog hadn't played yet this season, but even without their captain the Avalanche are a handful at home. Both of their victories this season have come at Ball Arena, and their 32-5-4 record on home ice last season was the best in the NHL.

One of the keys for the Jets will be improving on a certain aspect of their game, especially when it comes to slowing down the mobile defence that Colorado has in its line-up - including reigning Norris Trophy winner Cale Makar.
"We weren't physical enough against Dallas and we didn't win enough one-on-one battles and that isn't all just in your D-zone," Arniel said, referencing how Dallas defenceman Miro Heiskanen got up in the play to make things more difficult on the Jets.
"If you don't run into them in the offensive zone, if you don't get some skin on them going through the neutral zone, you're going to have a nightmare once you do get into your end of the rink," Arniel said. "So, we've got to make sure that it's a 200-foot game of making it hard on that defence to be a part of their offence."
Getting defence involved in the rush is something that the Jets have been working on since the start of camp. Arniel has seen progress, and is now hoping to see the next step in that progression.
"We do need to get more shots to the net, we know every team is looking to block," said Arniel. "I thought the other night we had some looks where we shot wide or we went to the far side where it ended up coming out of the zone. We're just talking to these guys about getting off the walls, getting to the middle of the ice and get centred whenever possible. And when possible pound that puck."
Puck drop is set for 7 pm CT.
-- Mitchell Clinton, WinnipegJets.com
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Game Notes
The Jets are in the midst of playing six of eight games on the road to open the season. The six games are a pair of three-game, four-night trips, with Winnipeg's first 15 road games against Western Conference teams.
Wednesday's game in Colorado is the front half of Winnipeg's first of 12 back-to-back sets this season. The Jets were 6-4-2 in the first game of a back-to-back last season and 5-5-2 in the second game.
After going goalless in his first seven games last season, Mark Scheifele has scored three of Winnipeg's five goals through the first two games of the season.
Nikolaj Ehlers has three assists in the first two games of the season. It's one shy of the four assists Ehlers had through the first two games of the 2019-20 season, which is tied or the most in franchise history.
READ THE FULL GAME NOTES