Jets Release 11 More

Photo by Benjamin Reed

As expected, the Jets made further cuts at camp today – sending 10 professionals to St John’s and Ian White back into the murky abyss of free agency. Below is the list and few thoughts on who remains.

A lot of words will be written about Morrissey’s extended look in camp today, but he’s not the only one to survive two rounds of cuts. Thirty-three skaters and four netminders remain in camp, including all of the Jets’ 1st round selections and Adam Lowry from the prospect side of things. Lowry may be the most interesting to survive the cuts so far, as Noel has been very verbal in his support for the 6’5" forward and the team has an open question regarding the composition of their third line. Lowry now has experience with both centre and wing, and has received praise for his two-way game, physicality, and skating since arriving in camp. 

Speaking of that third line, all of Eric O’Dell, Carl Klingberg, Ivan Telegin, Matt Halischuk, Andrew Gordon, and Jerome Samson remain in camp – presumably fighting for the chance to play with Frolik in regular rotation. James Wright and Eric Tangradi have both seen heaps of pre-season minutes and might be considered to have the inside track. But dark horse Anthony Peluso has seen a frequent rotation as well – a player I’ve long considered a face-pounding specialist. We can look for that training camp battle to take shape over the weekend.

On defence, Travis Hrubeniuk mentioned on this blog that Zach Bell had the distinction of first professional cut while Cody Sol and Ben Chiarot were still on the roster. Well, Sol now joins Bell on the farm, but somehow Chiarot remains with the Jets. His pre-season performance against Washington was less than inspiring and his time in the ECHL last year suggests he’s not a prospect of great interest to the Jets. Obviously, someone had to stay to make 12 defencemen for the Jets, but I’m curious to know why the Jets wouldn’t want a longer look at prospect Brenden Kichton, or Free Agent Ian White over someone with over 100 games in the organization already. 

Ian White. Goodness. As our own Rhys Finnick wrote earlier today, it seems like another example of seeing one thing and saying another for the Jets, as White was given one pre-season game on his off-side to prove his mettle. To me, he did. He was one of the Jets’ best defenders against Ottawa in spite of a setup to fail. If the organization has chosen Trouba or Morrissey (or anyone else) to take that spot, cutting White after such a limited public viewing is not exactly helping the guy, either. For White’s sake, we can hope another organization called his agent about a contract and the end to the PTO was beneficial. For the Jets, we have to wonder if this is the best decision for either winning now or developing prospects on the back end (i.e. winning in the future). We will wait for a further clue as to why this happened, but for now, the organization chose another weekend of ECHL’er Ben Chiarot to make a final decision on long-time NHL regular Ian White. 

Among goalies, it seems Olkinuora is the odd-man out in a carousel that includes Pavelec, Montoya, Pasquale, and Michael Hutchison – all of whom have more professional experience than the young Finn. Montoya was given his first action in a 4-1 loss to the Wild last night, and after just 6 starts in 48 contests last season, may be fighting for his job despite his contract status and NHL paycheque.