Jets Start Long Road Trip As Kane Denies Rumours

The Jets’ longest road trip of the season kicks off tonight in Philadelphia, but most of the attention has been focused on reports that promising forward Evander Kane wants a trade.

Tonight, the Jets kick off a stretch of seven games on the road . After playing the Flyers, the Jets will play a couple of divisional opponents (Tampa Bay and Florida) before heading to the New York area to play the Islanders, Rangers, Devils and Sabres – a stretch of four games in six nights, with the middle two games being back-to-back.

The Jets have not been good on the road to date, going 0-3-1 outside the confines of the MTS Centre. Still, it is quite early and the Thrashers were (relatively) decent on the road last season: they went 17-24 at home and 17-24 on the road, so perhaps this trip will give them an opportunity to shift their road fortunes. There are a lot of games in a short span, but this isn’t a visit to murderer’s row – there are a number of beatable teams for the Jets to play in the next two weeks, and with Chris Pronger out of the line-up for Philadelphia tonight, the Flyers are probably one of them.

This is something of a crucial stretch for the Jets, even at this early juncture of the season.  They currently sit dead last in the Eastern Conference with a 2-5-1 record; a bad run over the next seven games wouldn’t exactly eliminate them from playoff contention, but it would make it difficult to talk about the club as anything other than an also-ran.

One of the delightful little side effects of the ever-increasing role of social media in hockey reporting is the proliferation of rumours; stories formerly passed along by word of mouth can be re-tweeted with the click of the mouse (or the push of a button on a smartphone), and can take on a life of their own.

That’s what Evander Kane says happened with a report that he wanted out of Winnipeg. Courtesy of the Winnipeg Free Press:

Hopefully, that will put an end to the rumours. On the one hand, Kane isn’t likely to say anything else, but on the other hand the only support for the idea that he wants a trade comes from an amorphous report that nobody seems to want to put a name to. Unless somebody with knowledge and a reputation is willing to stand by the report as accurate, there isn’t any reason to believe it.