Wheeler, Bowness reflect on change to Jets leadership

WINNIPEG -On a day when it was announced the leadership group of the Winnipeg Jets will change, Blake Wheeler said it won't change a thing for him.
The 36-year-old forward, who has been the team's captain since August of 2016, will no longer wear the 'C' on his jersey as the Jets will enter the 2022-23 campaign without a captain.
Instead, there will be a group of alternate captains who have yet to be named.
"I'm really looking forward to watching a lot of the guys I've had a privilege watching kind of grow up step into sort of an expanded role," Wheeler said. "If you think that because of this, I'm just going to fade into the back and not be a leader on this team, you're sorely mistaken."
And that's exactly what head coach Rick Bowness expects out of him.

"Blake is a key part of this team. He's going to be a key part going forward," said Bowness on Friday. "We're all in this fight together every day. We're a family. We all have to be held accountable. We have to support each other, we have to help each other, we have to push each other - and that's what we're trying to establish. In order to do that, you need more people pushing and pulling it together."
That will be the goal of naming a group of alternate captains. Bowness took a "we'll see" approach as to which specific players will wear those letters.
"Let's take the letters right out of it and there's more people that want to take this, you can just tell. 'I want to be more involved, I want to be a bigger part of the team,'" Bowness said. "They will still want to get (involved) and I'm going to help them grow. And that's our job as coaches. We're going to help them grow."
Over his last six years, Wheeler hasn't only led by example - he was named a finalist for the Mark Messier Leadership Award in 2018 and had back-to-back 91-point seasons during that span - he also mentored players when necessary.
"I'm just looking forward to watching the guys I mentor step-up because it's their time now and like I said, I'm not going anywhere," Wheeler said. "I'm still going to be doing the things that I would have done with the 'C' on my jersey."

His jersey may look slightly different than the past six years, but the goal for Wheeler - and the Jets as a team - remains the same: Find a way to bounce back after a disappointing 2021-22 season.
"We've got a good group of guys with a chip on their shoulder and you can see a kind of fire in our room right now," Wheeler said. "We've even made a couple comments today from guys who haven't been here, just how the week before camp it's kind of just got out there and play shinny-hockey, you know, there seems to be some motivation in our room this year, so it's going to be an exciting camp to be a part of."
There have been hints that the Jets will also play a different system this season. Cole Perfetti and Mark Morrison both hinted at it at the start of Rookie Camp on Wednesday.
Bowness confirmed it.
"We want to be a much more aggressive team. The coaching has changed, the style has of play - we're going to initiate more of an aggressive pressure-oriented system and be a harder team to play against," he said. "They're all disappointed with what went on last year and now that's behind us."
Over the last few days, Wheeler has had the chance to let the news sink in. He likely experienced a wide range of emotions over that time, but on Friday, he only felt one.
Gratitude.
"Never in my wildest dreams as a young player growing up, I never thought I would be in that fraternity of being a captain of an NHL team," Wheeler said. "It's what has given me so much joy and gotten me out of bed and given me a lot of drive for this organization and this city. I just look back and I'm just grateful that I've had that opportunity. That's how I feel."