GAMEDAY: Wild at Jets

WINNIPEG – The Winnipeg Jets close out their three-game homestand with an important Central Division battle against the Minnesota Wild (TSN3, 680 CJOB/Power 97).

The Jets begin the day two points back of the Wild in the standings as Minnesota has gone 8-1-1 in their last ten games.

“We got a bit of a lesson last night from Carolina, a team I’m very familiar with. They play a hard game; they play a fast game. They have a pressure style, and we took a little while to adjust to that,” said assistant coach Dean Chynoweth after practice on Saturday.

“It’s a bit of a copycat league, too, when you’re doing pre-scouts and watching other teams and you’re trying to pick apart the other team with where we can benefit from, and teams are doing that to us. So, I won’t be surprised about them coming out extremely hard. Obviously, it’s a division game that we need.”

The Western Conference standings have a log jam after the Colorado Avalanche (39 points), as second place and 11^th place are separated by only six points.

“I’ve seen it in a number of different years where some of the young teams get out of the gate and then they start to falter and then the cream comes back to the top,” said Chynoweth.

“But there is parity in the league, there’s no doubt about it. We have a salary cap league and there is parity. It’s great for the fans. It’s not so great for a coach at times.”

Make sure to tune into the Jets pregame show "The Check In" at 12:30 CT with Sara Orlesky and Jamie Thomas.

The one thing Chynoweth has to be happy with is that he almost has all of his defenceman back healthy. Only Haydn Fleury remains sidelined with an injury.

“Well, we’ve had a real change in pairings. Everybody has played up to the four spots, five, six. Guys have been in and out. So that’s a good problem in the sense we had the depth to be able to do that, to try to get that through the early stages when we had the injuries. Now that we’re getting back it’s kind of settling in,” said Chynoweth.

“Obviously Samberg’s getting back acclimated with Pionk and then again, it’s a bit of a dogfight there with the remaining guys. They’re veteran guys, some have been in the lineup, some have been out.”

Eric Comrie started his stretch as the Jets number one goaltender with Connor Hellebuyck being out for four-to-six weeks on Friday. He bounced back after allowing the first shot on goal to get by him and was solid the rest of the way. Comrie joked with Jets goaltending coach Wade Flaharty that he would be fine after the first goal.

“Flats goes, ‘oh man, first shot of the game, I was a little worried.’ I was like, I’ve been scored on the first shot of the game many times before. Don't worry. And you know what? It's gonna happen again. I've got this. I've done it before. I'll do it'll happen again,” said Comrie.

“It's just the way things happen in this game of hockey, you never know what's gonna happen. It's weird, balances weird things. But once again, I just go out there and play my game and whatever, whatever happens, results happen. They can you can take care of themselves.”

Comrie said he feels like the Jets defensive structure that they pride themselves on is getting closer and closer to returning.

“Oh, 100% I mean, I thought we played a great game (Friday) against Carolina. We played really strong against I mean, arguably one of the best teams, if not the best team in the league. We don't care. Colorado is right there with them, but they're two excellent teams. We played excellent right with them all night long,” said Comrie.

“We could have won that game as and you can see it last little week here, we've been giving up a lot less chances. We played very good in our own end and limiting chance. I think we understand the more chances we limit, the more opportunity we're going to have.”

Puck drop is scheduled for 3 CT.