GAMEDAY: Jets at Oilers

The Winnipeg Jets are playing the third of their six-game preseason and their first road game at Rogers Place on Friday against the Edmonton Oilers tonight.

Winnipeg is coming off a 3-2 loss to the Oilers on Tuesday night and will be looking for their first win of the preseason.

As is usually the case at this time of year, the Jets will send a younger roster to face Edmonton with Nino Niederreiter, Vlad Namestnikov and Alex Iafallo getting their first game action since camp began just over a week ago.

“Yeah, it'd be nice to get into a game and an away game,” said Iafallo.

“Get some action going, kind of get things going early, get speed, up the pace. And just playing with line mates and making plays. I think it's going to be fun to get back out there.”

Dominic DiVincentiis will get the start in goal, and the plan is for him to play the entire game with Isaac Poulter backing him up. The Jets 2022 fifth-round pick was spectacular in the first game of the 2025 Prospect Showdown in Montreal earlier this month making 38 saves in a 3-2 win.

“Yeah, I was very impressed. I haven’t really seen very much of him. Saw a little bit in camp last year and he had the injury the year before,” said head coach Scott Arniel who was in Montreal that night.

“But he just looked confident, he looked big. Montreal’s power play was zipping pucks around and he was going side to side and making big stops. For me, just stop the ones you’re supposed to stop and then I kind of stay out of it from that point forward.”

It’s another great opportunity for the likes of Danny Zhilkin, Colby Barlow, Brad Lambert to make a good impression. That trio will play on a line this evening against the Oilers, Lambert looked a lot more confident on Tuesday than he did in the preseason opener putting up a couple of assists in the process.

“I like everybody, but it is like for a lot of the young guys, do what you do best and I think he has shown his speed at times. I know he got himself in position to get some good looks and that is what we want, to continue to do those things, you could say that about a bunch of the young guys,” said Arniel.

“I thought they were better if they got to play a second game. You want to get the rust off and get going and try to be as close to the player that you need to be to get on our roster.”

Elias Salomonsson was supposed to play again tonight but is sick so Ashton Sautner will play in his place. The Jets will play again on Saturday as they host Calgary and expect some roster decisions to be made after that.

“There are some veterans that will probably only play two games, and we are trying to get the kids somewhere in three, some in four games but we have to see how we get through the weekend on the injuries and stuff like that,” said Arniel.

“We have to thin the herd a little bit getting into next week. There are still opportunities. That is part of what I mentioned: go out there play well and earn yourself
another opportunity.”