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TRIAL BY FIRE

The Winnipeg Jets' youth wing sharpened their teeth on the Calgary Flames

By Melissa Martin

October 2^nd, 2015

down to the wire

It’s just preseason. The score itself hardly matters, even if Thursday night’s game did end in the Jets’ second victory of exhibition, a 3-1 win. But the Jets didn’t want to lose this one, or rather, the handful of skaters still fighting to stick on the NHL roster wanted to show they could get the job done.

They showed enough, head coach Paul Maurice said later, to get another shot. Nic Petan fed Mark Scheifele with a beauty. Nik Ehlers, well, he danced magic to slip unstopped from the boards to the slot, where he wristed a shot that stood up as the game-winner.

Even Thomas Raffl, the 29-year-old Austrian national making his first big run at the NHL, tried to drop the gloves against Brandon Bollig to show he can throw a punch. Yeah, yeah, Jets heavyweight Anthony Peluso stepped in to throw fists instead, but at least he tried. “I’m glad that he was willing to do it,” Maurice said.

first spark

Calgary made the opening strike on Friday night, scoring early in the first period — and on just their second shot on the Jets’ net. Hey, all credit to Flames forward Deryk Engelland, who sniped a top-shelf shot on Winnipeg goalie Michael Hutchinson.

The Jets’ netminder only stumbled that once; he turned away the other 32 shots he faced, including a flurry of 16 shots against in an increasingly tense third period.

the kids are alright

Okay, so at 22 and heading into his third full season in the NHL, Jets center Mark Scheifele isn’t exactly a kid anymore. Still, for the purposes of this piece, consider him part of the youth wing that lit up the MTS Centre three times.

The first one? It was nifty. The Jets were on the power play — for that, they can thank Calgary defenceman prospect Brett Kulak, who went to the box for hooking Dustin Byfuglien — when Nic Petan worked the puck close to the crease and whipped it lightning-quick onto the tape of Scheifele’s stick.

Blink and you’d miss the pass, it was that quick. Scheifele didn’t blink. Instead, he tipped the shot right past Calgary goalie Joni Ortio, to tie the game up at one apiece. Ehlers picked up the second assist and there were hockey hugs. Training-camp hockey hugs, anyway. Soon, the hugs will bear a little more urgency.

Petan, later, shrugged off his part of the goal. No biggie, he seemed to say. “Puck came to me in the middle, I saw Scheifs in front, and it was kind of an obvious pass,” Petan said. “Luckily, it went in.”

THE REAL D-EHLERS

Trust us, you will be so sick of that pun by the end of next season. Or, potentially, this one.

There are many reasons to keep a close eye on rookie Ehlers. He’s fast. He’s smart. He does interesting things with the puck, and few on Thursday night were more interesting than this: just over 30 seconds left in the first period. Scheifele, under pressure along the boards, slipped Ehlers a slick pass.

Then, not so far away from where one fan waved a Danish flag, Ehlers danced around traffic and into the slot, and then just wristed the thing into the Calgary net. Sure, sure, this group of Flames defencemen was most definitely not the typical NHL bunch. Still, what a play, and what a talent to watch. ( Oh look, even Thomas Raffl — that’s him in the No. 21 jersey — is pumped to see it all happen.)

Maybe Jets fans ain’t seen nothing yet. Or maybe that’s just the optimism of and about a 19-year-old hockey player on the brink of holding it all. “You can expect a better Ehlers, let me say it like that,” the player said later, about what people might expect from him every night in the NHL. “There’s still some things I can improve on, and I feel like if I play a couple more games, it’s going to be there.”

When the going gets tough

…the Calgary Flames start fighting. Or something. Either way, the game grew increasingly scrappy, usually went Dustin Byfuglien was in the mix. Among the most memorable: in the second period, Flames winger Garnet Hathaway pounced on Jacob Trouba after the Jets defenceman got mucked up with Calgary’s goalie.

Trouba took the goalkeeper interference penalty, Hathaway went off for roughing. But first, they grappled at each other a bit, and Hathaway managed to yank Trouba’s jersey clear over his head. The crowd cheered wildly as Trouba pulled it off on his way to the sin bin.

can't get enough WHOAVERTIME

Even though the Jets won clean in regulation, there was a bonus round of 3-on-3 overtime. Why? Because the NHLers need all the practice they can get with the new format. And because it’s fun, dang fun, more fun than going home. Or anything else one would’ve potentially done with those five minutes.

Unfortunately, fans only got 35 seconds of glory this time. Tyler Myers, who at approximately four thousand feet tall (6’8) is destined to only ever be shown on video that’s angled up into his nostrils, scored the game-winner. Err, the second game-winner of the night. So he had fun too.

NET PROCEEDS

Michael Hutchinson stopped all but one of the 33 shots he faced. Some of those saves were straight beauties, as the kids say. Like the time halfway through the period when he slid with his left pad flush to the ice, to stop a nearly deadly scoring chance from Flames forward Sam Bennett.

Much improved, from his last outing. So media asked him about that, naturally.

What comes next

With the regular season still a week away, Paul Maurice isn’t tipping his hand just yet. There are still a handful of cuts left. So the Jets’ post-game press conferences “will be livelier next week,” Maurice quipped after an uncommonly dry turn at the podium on Thursday night.

He did take some time to talk about the Winnipeg Jets’ youth wing, though. Namely, that they’ll all skate again on Saturday in Calgary, the last game before games begin to matter.

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