Scheifele, Lowry, Enstrom near return for Jets

WINNIPEG -- Mark Scheifele, Adam Lowry and Toby Enstrom are on the verge of returning from injury and could play for the Winnipeg Jets against the Dallas Stars at Bell MTS Place on Sunday (7:30 p.m. ET; SN, TVAS, FS-SW, NHL.TV).
Scheifele, a center, has missed five games with an upper-body injury, Lowry, a center, has missed 19 games and 27 of the past 29 with an upper-body injury, and Enstrom, a defenseman, has missed four games and eight of the past nine with a lower-body injury.

Each was a full participant, including contact, at practice Saturday.
"It's definitely a possibility," Scheifele said about facing the Stars. "I feel good. It's finally good to get a practice in with the guys, so it's a good step forward for sure.
"I think it depends on how I feel tomorrow morning when I wake up. You finally get some contact in, you've got to see how you feel the next day."

The Jets are in second place in the Central Division, 10 points behind the Nashville Predators and seven points ahead of the Minnesota Wild.
Defenseman Dmitry Kulikov will have back surgery in the coming days, and it will be eight weeks until the Jets know anything more, coach Paul Maurice said Saturday. Kulikov re-injured his back at the New Jersey Devils on March 8 and has not played since.
The Jets lineup against the Stars could look dramatically different than it did in a 3-1 loss at the Nashville Predators on Tuesday. If Scheifele, Lowry and Enstrom return Sunday, Winnipeg will have five of nine players back who were out with injuries earlier in the week.

Defenseman Jacob Trouba, who missed 20 games with an ankle injury, and center Paul Stastny, who missed one game with an upper-body injury, returned for a 6-2 win against the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday.
Still out are center Matt Hendricks (6-8 weeks, lower body), Kulikov, and goalies Steve Mason (2-3 weeks, knee) and Michael Hutchinson (indefinite, concussion).
Scheifele, who has 51 points (21 goals, 30 assists) in 50 games this season, missed 16 games between Dec. 29 and Feb. 6 with an upper-body injury. He collided with teammate Blake Wheeler on March 6 at the New York Rangers.
"As soon as it happened, as soon as I left the game, I knew it wasn't going to be a long, drawn-out thing," Scheifele said. "I went through a long stretch earlier so this is, only being out [five] games, it's definitely not the same, but you definitely want to get your legs under you early and just get used to that battle again."
Finding the battle level will be everything, said Lowry, who normally centers the Jets' shutdown line. He sat out eight games Jan. 7-25, returned for two games Jan. 30 against the Tampa Bay Lightning and Feb. 1 against the Vegas Golden Knights, but has been out since.
"You never want to say you came back too early, and I don't think I did," said Lowry, who has 14 points (eight goals, six assists) in 35 games. "It definitely wears on you. You're anxious and you want to get back in. But at the same time you have to be smart and there's a long-term goal here, and that's to be healthy and ready for the playoffs."

Lowry said he knows the compete level of games has increased during the time he has missed.
"There's certainly going to be some rust," he said. "Hopefully I'll get back in like Jacob did and have a couple of assists in the first period [in a 6-2 win against the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday] and be laughing the rest of the game. It's all about getting your timing down and it's tough to emulate that physicality and battle level in practice.
"We have three weeks left until the end of the regular season, so I think there's plenty of time to get back into gear. I don't expect it to be a magical return and to feel my greatest in my first game back. It's all about building toward Game 1 of the playoffs, making sure for Game 1 I hit the ground running."
Maurice was optimistic about Scheifele and Lowry being ready to return.

"They're feeling pretty darn strong," he said. "The last piece to player rehab is player confidence. If he's telling you that he's ready to go … there's a difference between a guy listing the things that don't feel right but he thinks he can play and then you have a guy who walks in like [Trouba] did, who said, 'I'm ready to play and I want to play.' We'd like to get that with all our injuries, that the player has that kind of confidence that they're past the medical part now."
Maurice said Enstrom is an option Sunday, but a tougher read because of the nature of his injury.
"His pain tolerance is incredibly high and this is a pain-tolerance issue, not an injury that necessarily gets worse," Maurice said. "We've given it a good chunk of time off. If he feels he can play with it, then he's going to go."
The Jets, 10-4-1 in their past 15 games, have been able to afford being cautious about having injured players come back too soon, thanks largely to forwards Blake Wheeler and Patrik Laine.

Wheeler leads Winnipeg in scoring with 78 points, and his 60 assists are most in the NHL. Laine is second in the League with 41 goals, one behind Washington Capitals forward Alex Ovechkin, and has 24 points (16 goals, eight assists) in a 14-game point streak, the longest active run in the NHL and the longest by a teenager in League history.
Maurice said he's trying to keep the focus on small-picture habits and performance, and nothing will change against the Stars, who hold the second wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Western Conference and are 10 points behind the Jets in the Central Division.
"We've been in a reasonably comfortable position," Maurice said. "It's always precarious in the Central Division … but we've taken that live-your-life-daily approach since the start of the year. We haven't talked about the playoff picture or what this means or the damage we can do to another team. This is all about how we play."