Fourth-line injection
Jets hope newcomer Shore can help struggling linemates
If you’re one for a good pun, you can view the slight modification to the Winnipeg Jets’ fourth line as the team Shore-ing up its energy trio.
To do so, Paul Maurice is inserting Nick Shore into the mix for his team’s matchup against the Anaheim Ducks on Sunday.
The 27-year-old former Toronto Maple Leafs centre will take the spot of 19-yearold rookie David Gustafsson on the line that also features Joona Luoto and Logan Shaw on the flanks.
Puns aside, the adjustment has hockey-related reasons.
Shore was sniped off the waiver wire by the Jets last Wednesday in hopes his veteran presence could aid a line that’s largely been relegated to playing inside their own zone this season. And more often than not, ‘playing’ could be interchanged with ‘chasing,’ as in they were often chasing the puck.
So Maurice said while he’s seen some good from that line as of late, the team was looking to augment it in some form or another.
“Those guys are getting better, I just want to see the puck moved a little differently,” Maurice said. “We need more. “They’re not going to 12 minutes (per game), I like the way top-line minutes are spread out, so that group has to be effective in a low-minute situation.”
While the Jets have made up for it with their revamped top-nine, the team has received less than what they’d expect from a relatively inexperienced bottom three.
Between the three, there’s been a single goal, Gustafsson’s first as an NHLer, since the line was put together 13 games ago after Bryan Little and Gabriel Bourque were injured in the same game in early November.
Shaw is the first to admit that the line hasn’t chipped in offensively in the way he or his linemates would have liked.
“We started off really slow and it wasn’t pretty to watch,” he said. “We have to be strong, we have to bring that momentum swing or don’t give them the momentum on the ice.”
Like Maurice, Shaw felt the line was getting more comfortable in the past couple of games, spending less time getting hemmed in the defensive zone every shift.
With Shore’s inclusion, the same ideas that the line had been employing as they worked their way to comfort will stay the same.
“We don’t want to come back, so if you’re going to make a mistake, make it by going north,” Shaw said.
Shore didn’t feature in Thursday’s 3-2 overtime defeat to the Dallas Stars. He had only met up with the team for the first time earlier in the day.
“It was good to sort of watch and go over some of the systems,” Shore said. “Looking forward to the opportunity… and making an impact.”
Shore represents the first piece in what is likely to become a complete overhaul of the team’s fourth line in the coming days.
Winnipeg’s infirmary will soon see two discharged as Mason Appleton has been cleared to play and Bourque, who skated in a regular jersey on Saturday, has been cleared for contact.
Gustafsson, meanwhile, could very well be headed back to Sweden in the near future with a pitstop at the world junior hockey championships along the way.
“We won’t make a decision on his year with the world juniors as the primary factor,” Maurice said. “This will be Winnipeg Jets first, David Gustafsson second in terms of how that fits.”
Maurice said the minutes Gustafsson has played have had real value.
“Positionally, his reads and all of those things are way above a 19-year-old, he doesn’t make many mistakes in the defensive zone,” Maurice said. “But we’re in the defensive zone an awful lot with the grouping. We need to get them out to the end of the ice a little bit more and we also want him touching the puck more. We don’t want him burning a year without touching the puck.
“So those are the things we are thinking about.”