TAMPA – Vladislav Namestnikov will try and get himself the best birthday present possible when the Winnipeg Jets (10-5-2) take on the Tampa Bay Lightning (9-6-4) on Wednesday:
A win.
The 30-year-old, who turns 31 on game day, has spent parts of six seasons (315 of his 647 National Hockey League games) with the Lightning, who drafted him 27th overall in the 2011 NHL Draft.
“It’ll be good to win for sure,” he said with a grin. “The boys are ready. We’ve had a couple good practices, a couple good rest days, so we did our homework and we’re ready to go.”
He still has some friends on the team, but is far more focused on making sure his current team’s three-game win streak extends to four.
The forward has been a big part of Winnipeg’s consecutive victories over New Jersey, Buffalo, and Arizona – which helped the club cap off a five-game home stand with eight of a possible 10 points. He’s currently riding a four-game point streak and has one goal and five points in that span.
“You always want to build off the previous game,” he said after Tuesday’s 40-minute skate at Amalie Arena. “We’ve strung together a couple good games here. We have to keep building on it, each game, and get better and better. Hopefully we can get more wins here.”
It’s the third time this season that the Jets have put together a three-game win streak. If they want to reach four straight victories for the first time this season, they’ll have to do it against a Lightning squad that has also won three in a row – including a thrilling overtime victory over Boston on Monday night.
“It was a fun game to watch, lots of chances,” said associate coach Scott Arniel. “Boston is obviously having a real good year, but so is Tampa. They’ve been on a roll here too. Their transition game, their top players, they’ve been doing a lot of good things - even without their number one goaltender. Probably the biggest thing though is that their transition has been real good.”
The workload doesn’t get any easier as the trip goes on. After the Lightning (who are 6-2-2 on home ice this season), the Jets will take on the Florida Panthers (8-2-0 in their last 10) before wrapping up the trip on Sunday in Nashville.
“When you’re winning, things are great,” said Nino Niederreiter. “That’s the feeling we want to have most of the year. We can’t take it for granted. We come into a tough little road trip here with some big teams coming up here, and a team that we have to (beat) in terms of the Central Division. It’s something we’re all aware of, but we definitely have a good feeling right now.”
But the Jets can’t get ahead of themselves. They need to focus solely on what’s in front of them, and that’s Tampa.
“They’re a veteran team. They know how to win,” said Namestnikov. “At the same time, we’ve done our research, we know what we have to do against them and we’re ready to go.”
LINE RUSHES
After taking a maintenance day on Monday, both Namestnikov and Morgan Barron were full participants in Tuesday’s session.
The line rushes looked like this:
Connor-Scheifele-Iafallo
Perfetti-Namestnikov-Ehlers
Niederreiter-Lowry-Appleton
Barron-Gustafsson-Jonsson-Fjallby
Vilardi (non-contact), Toninato
Morrissey-DeMelo
Dillon-Pionk
Samberg-Schmidt
Stanley
NON-CONTACT, SORT OF
For the second consecutive day, Gabriel Vilardi wore a non-contact jersey and skated with the full group.
Although, the gold non-contact jersey didn’t mean Vilardi was off-limits to everyone.
Brenden Dillon threw a check on the 24-year-old winger in a rush drill.
“Gabe wanted to get a little bit of bumping around a little bit to get a feel for stuff,” said Arniel. “I don’t know if he was expecting Dilly to hit him. Half of the team didn’t know that. They thought maybe Dilly was colour blind and didn’t see the yellow jersey.”
So thankfully, that contact was planned. It’s the latest step in Vilardi’s recovery from the sprained MCL he sustained back on October 17, in Winnipeg’s third game of the season.
