NO BLUELINE BLUES
Having absences on defence is old hat for these Jets
The Winnipeg Jets have a chance to reach the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time.
But they’ll probably have to do it with the most depleted blue line they’ve ever had.
Losing Dmitry Kulikov and Toby Enstrom before the playoffs was one thing.
When Tyler Myers went down in Game 3 against Minnesota, things got interesting.
But for Game 5 against the Wild on Friday, the Jets will be without those three, plus Josh Morrissey, who has been suspended for his crosscheck on Eric Staal in Game 4.
That’s four of their top six defencemen, out at the same time.
When will it begin to catch up with them?
“It doesn’t really cross my mind,” Bryan Little was saying on Thursday. “It’s going to take a lot more for us to get nervous about that.”
One by one, the Jets stood before notebooks and cameras and made similar comments about shrugging off the loss of Morrissey, probably their best all-around performer on the blue line this season.
Not that they don’t appre- ciate Morrissey’s value.
It’s just that they’ve been overcoming the loss of players all season.
“For sure, it’s a hole,” coach Paul Maurice said. “We’ve, unfortunately over the past four years, gotten to be pretty good at having defencemen out. That’s standard.”
Everybody talks about how deep the Jets are, but that’s usually been a reference to their forwards.
On defence, didn’t they seem kind of thin going into the season?
Ben Chiarot and Tucker Poolman were healthy scratches, remember? On Friday, they’ll be a pair for the second straight game, against the desperate Wild.
But that’s not all.
Assuming Myers remains out—hed idn’t skate on Thursday — the Jets will dip into their farm team for Sami Niku, one game after dipping into the reserves for Poolman.
“It’s kind of a crazy thing,” Poolman acknowledged.
“You always prepare like you’re going to get a chance. Odds are it probably doesn’t happen.”
The standard hockey cliches don’t even fit this situation.
“You hear it all the time — you need to have eight or nine NHL defenceman that can play,” Chiarot said.
The problem is Niku would be the 10th.
Of course, there are worse players you could call up than one who was just named the American League’s best defenceman. As a rookie.
Niku is supposed to be getting ready for a relatively gentle baptism into North American playoff hockey, with the Manitoba Moose.
Instead, he’d be thrown into the pool without anybody really knowing if he can swim.
“It’s really nice to know that I can play in the Stanley Cup playoffs before I play AHL playoffs,” Niku said, seemingly oblivious to the pressure he’d be under.
Niku figures the one NHL game he has played will help a lot, but that was more like an AHL affair, a laid-back, devil-may-care outing in Montreal, the Jets coasting to the playoffs, the Habs coasting to nowhere.
If Niku expects the same room to move, Friday, he’ll be in for a rude awakening.
Don’t think he’s worried about it, though.
“I think I’m not guy who is nervous,” he said. “It’s normal game for me.”
And normal for the Jets, as Paul Stastny found out when he got here at the trade deadline.
“This team has had a lot of injuries and didn’t skip a beat,” Stastny said. “When I got here they still had some guys out, and we just kept playing along. It’s just a product of how the coaching staff has ingrained the way we want to play here.
“We’re moving the puck quick, no matter who’s in our lineup.”
Ending the series quick is the bigger goal.
“It’s another part of the learning process,” Little said. “We’ve got to figure out a way to beat these guys and move on.
“We don’t want to give them any life or any hope.”