Another strength for the Jets as of late has been their depth scoring. Morgan Barron scored the game winning goal on Sunday night in Buffalo and players like Rasmus Kupari, Cole Perfetti and David Gustafsson have been doing the little things to help the team win.
“As fourth line, you get less shifts than the other guys, but you’ve got to make those shifts work and count,” said Gustafsson.
“I feel that’s what we did against Buffalo and got the game-winning goal from Morgs (Barron).”
There are a couple of changes to the lineup tonight starting with Logan Stanley coming in for Nate Schmidt. Rick Bowness said that Schmidt has been dealing with an illness and needs some time to recover.
“Nate probably he could play through it,” said Bowness.
“But we've got an extra body here and Stan's been playing well, so let's give Nate a good chance to get rid of this thing.”
Gabe Vilardi will not play tonight but will travel with the team tomorrow to Seattle. Bowness wouldn’t say if the 24-year-old would play over the weekend or not.
Connor Hellebuyck will get the start in goal, it will be just his second career start against Seattle, he shut out the Kraken 3-0 on December 9, 2021.
Seattle is currently seven points back of Nashville for the final wild card spot in the West and added two huge points with their win in Calgary on Monday. Even though it was a physical contest in Alberta for Seattle, the Jets are not expecting the Kraken to just hand them the win.
“All the games we've played with Seattle have been fast and very tight checking, not a lot of room out there. They use their speed to get on top of us and try to use our speed to get on top of them,” said Bowness.
“They've been low-event games and regardless of if they played last night, there's so much at stake right now you overcome fatigue, you overcome sickness, you overcome everything and lay it all on the line and we fully expect that from that crew tonight.”
CONTROL WHAT WE CAN CONTROL
This will be the Jets last game before the NHL’s trade deadline at 2 p.m. CT, the team will be in Seattle on Friday. From the sounds of it, the players are more focused on what they are doing on the ice.
“Control what we can control. Go out and play. If we make a move, we make a move. If not, great. This is our group. Great. It’s up to Chevy and the front office to decide what they want to do,” said DeMelo.
“We feel we have a great group in here and guys have done a great job all year, playing well and using our depth. Goaltending has been great. We feel confident with our group.”
