Heinola embracing opportunity as Jets begin two-game road trip

WINNIPEG - Nate Schmidt has been where Ville Heinola is now - well, sort of.
As the two addressed the media shortly after the Winnipeg Jets held a 30-minute skate before flying to Buffalo, Schmidt turned to Heinola and asked a simple question.
"How old are you right now?"
Heinola turned to his teammate and responded "I'm 21."
To which Schmidt answered, offering some perspective on where Heinola already is in his career.
"I wasn't even playing pro hockey at his age. I was still in college," Schmidt said. "That's something I think people sometimes forget."

In Winnipeg's last outing - a 2-1 overtime victory over Arizona on Sunday - Heinola played his first National Hockey League game since February 14.
Heinola assisted on Mark Scheifele's goal in regulation time and played 15:28 in the contest that helped the Jets earn their third victory of a four-game home stand.

Between Heinola's two most recent NHL games, he's played seven games at the American Hockey League level with the Manitoba Moose.
"Always, as a player, you want to play in the NHL, and that's your goal. But obviously I understand if I don't play much here it's probably better for me to play a lot of minutes down there," said Heinola. "I feel like just have to find the right way to do that and I feel like, for me, I have play a couple of games with the Moose. It's been nice for me. I play a lot there. Obviously it raised my confidence there. Then I now have chance to play here."
Having a defence partner in Schmidt to communicate with has been helpful for Heinola.
Schmidt's first pro season was spent entirely with Hershey in the AHL in 2012-13. Then, for the next two seasons, he was up and down between the AHL and NHL, splitting time between Hershey and the Washington Capitals.
"The biggest thing of what I had to go through when I was Ville's age, is as much as you can, harness those experiences and take them moving forward," said Schmidt, who now has 516 NHL games under his belt. "The biggest part about being a defenceman in this league, in this game, is knowing where the plays you can make and when plays aren't there; what areas of the ice you're in versus when you're coming out of the corner.
"So, there are parts of the game that you're going to get with experience, and that's the only way you're gonna get it."
The amount of communication between Schmidt and Heinola helped the young defenceman on Sunday, and he expects that will continue going forward.
"When he talks to me a lot, like, on the ice or off the ice, everything, it's just way easier for me," Heinola said. "I feel like for me when I get my chance I have to be good and play my game so I think then I can stay in the lineup."
Heinola will get a chance to add more experience to his NHL resume as the Jets embark on a two-game road trip that begins Wednesday against the Buffalo Sabres.
"He's going to play," said Jets interim head coach Dave Lowry. "I want our young guys to know that they are going to make mistakes and they are going to get opportunities, but if they continue to make the same mistake, then it falls back on us and we have to make decisions. When Ville has played, he's played extremely well."

Just as the defensive pair of Heinola and Schmidt stayed the same on Wednesday, so too did the rest of the Jets line combinations:
Stastny-Scheifele-Ehlers
Connor-Dubois-Wheeler
Sanford-Lowry-Appleton
Harkins-Toninato-Svechnikov
Morrissey-DeMelo
Dillon-Pionk
Heinola-Schmidt
The Sabres are 4-0-2 in their last six games after a 6-5 comeback win over the Chicago Blackhawks on Monday.
At this point of the season, with 15 games to go and two points separating the Jets from the final wildcard spot in the Western Conference heading into action on Tuesday night, the opponent doesn't really matter.
The final result is all the Jets are concerned about.
"We're 7-3 in our last 10, but we've got to pick up even more," said Schmidt. "And you look at our next segment of games and you see that we actually have quite a bit of home games still left, it's a good chance for us to still be able to do this thing."
It can be easy to start doing mathematical formulas to try and determine just how many points the Jets will need to extend their season past game 82.
In Lowry's mind, it's way easier to just focus on what's coming each day.
"We look at it that we have to win tomorrow," said Lowry. "You hope that you're going to get help along the way, but the big thing is that you've got to win your own games. It is a daunting task if you look at the broad scope, so you just try and stay in the moment."