WINNIPEG – Another day of training camp, another day of working on special teams for the Winnipeg Jets.
The Jets had two groups on different rinks to start practice on Monday before merging the two. Despite the time crunch that comes with a quick training camp, Davis Payne and Dean Chynoweth are doing an excellent job getting their systems across to the players.
“We've had a chance to do it in the games,” said head coach Scott Arniel after the skate this morning.
“There's a lot of good video that both Davis and Dean showed before practice of us executing some of the new things are implementing. And it was good execution. I liked a lot of what I saw.”
It would be unfair to expect things to go smoothly in every one of the four preseason games so far. After all, you are not seeing anything close to what the Jets roster will look like when they start the 2024-25 campaign in Edmonton. But there are signs things are clicking on the PK side of things.
“As you've seen from some of the exhibition games, there's been kills, power plays that look sharp, entries, entry denials, things like that. And then there's been times where the read is just been a little off,” said Adam Lowry.
“So, I think the more reps we get now before we get into these final two preseason games, will be huge, and then hopefully we don't take a lot of penalties against the Flames, but it certainly is going to be a good test starting the season against the Oilers.”
There might not be a better challenge to see where the penalty kill is than starting with the defending West champs. After all, the Oilers power play is the envy of many franchises. The Jets will go back to using Mark Scheifele and Kyle Connor on the penalty kill. There are examples all over the league as to just how effective using offensive minded players can be.
“I think it looks when talking to Dean with having (Sebastian) Aho killing in Carolina, and you don't necessarily need to get in shooting lanes. I think sometimes the big fear is you lose a key player. They have to eat a one timer because they're 20 feet off, “said Lowry.
“And he kind of mentioned that with how smart those guys are and their reads, oftentimes they can get in the lanes, or they can kind of intercept passes, just anticipating, you know, knowing what the power play guys can expect. And you know, when they get the puck, they can make things happen.”
As for the power play, the entries during practice today looked really good. Going back to the game in St. Paul on the weekend, Arniel liked those and the effort during faceoffs as well.
“You got to have a jump mentality. And I thought, you look at that game in Minnesota, our face off losses, we were great on our recoveries. We had a couple of real good ones that we showed (on video). That's the starting point. If you lose it, it goes down the ice,” said Arniel.
“The next thing is, you got to get into the zone and get yourself ready to go. And if you're spending all your time breaking out, obviously, it's not very advantageous to be on the power play. So, our execution and our details on our entries has been really good. And so far, I mean, we'll see again, we get into Wednesday's game, how it looks against Calgary, and keep working on that.”
