Tonight, on a heritage blue jersey night, the Jets will have a chance to keep their recent good stretch of play going. The Jets won against the St. Louis Blues in Winnipeg 3-1 on Tuesday. It was a defensive battle at times, and the Jets star players made the difference on the scoresheet. Tonight, the Jets play their second of three games at Canada Life Centre (this week) against the Florida Panthers, who are 4-5-1 in their last 10 games. The back to back champions are in the middle of a close Eastern Conference playoff race, while the Jets are just trying to get out of the bottom five of the league standings.

The now 30th overall 20-23-6 Winnipeg Jets and 19th overall 25-20-3 Panthers will clash at Canada Life Centre, with these two teams looking for a win to end their “work week”. We’re now approaching the end of the month with the busiest part of the 2025-26 NHL season schedule. After tonight, the Jets still have 4 more games in January. The schedule continues to be jammed full of games due to the upcoming 3 week Olympic break in early February.

The Jets and Panthers have not yet met this regular season. The season series continues (and concludes) at the end of the month, January 31st, in Florida. These two teams have been fairly even matched in their recent matchups, with the Jets winning six of the last ten. With a win tonight the Jets would take a 1-0 season series “lead” against this Atlantic Division team who is trying to make their way back into a playoff spot.

The injury report for the Winnipeg Jets now has four names: Haydn Fleury has an upper body injury and is still listed as “week-to-week”. Neal Pionk continues to be listed as “week-to-week” with a lower body injury, and that’s still the same status for Colin Miller, who has a knee injury. Elias Salomonsson remains out day-to-day with an illness. The Panthers have a not so grand total of seven names on their injury report. Jonah Gadjovich, Seth Jones and Tomas Nosek are out long term and should be back after the Olympic break. Cole Schwindt and Brad Marchand should be back in the lineup next week, while Dmitry Kulikov and Alex Barkov are out long term, with Barkov being out for the season.

Connor – Scheifele – Iafallo

Perfetti – Toews – Vilardi

Niederreiter – Lowry – Namestnikov

Nyquist – Barron – Pearson

Morrissey – DeMelo

Samberg – Schenn

Phillips – Stanley

Hellebuyck

Comrie

The unconfirmed starting goalie is Connor Hellebuyck, after Eric Comrie got the start on Tuesday night against the Blues. After Hellebuyck’s most recent start, he now holds a 12-13-5 record with a 2.71 GAA and a .902 SV%. The Jets lineup is set to be unchanged from their last game, as they seem to approve the combinations that have worked well as of their past few games. As usual, there could be some announced lineup changes by the Jets prior to the game, so make sure to stay tuned to the Jets official X/Twitter account for any late lineup additions or changes prior to puck drop.

Luostarinen – Lundell – Reinhart

Verhaeghe – Bennett – Tkachuk

Samoskevich – Rodrigues – Greer

Vilmanis – Schwindt – Boqvist

Forsling – Ekblad

Mikkola* – Balinskis (Mikkola is questionable for tonight)

Bjornfot – Petry

Bobrobsky

Tarasov

The Panthers lineup is without a handful of key players, but still features several underrated gems and some veteran players who are excelling on this roster. Looking at the Panthers’ player stats through 48 games, Sam Reinhart leads the way with 47 points. Sergei Bobrovsky is the unconfirmed starting goalie, fresh off his goalie fight against the Sharks earlier this week. Bobrovsky continues to be a great starting NHL goalie alongside Danil Tarasov, and he’s been posting some average numbers throughout this season. Bobrovsky holds a 19-14-1 record with a 3.98 GAA, 3 shutouts and a .874 SV%.

Tonight the player to watch from each team will be a forward who can play well at both ends of the ice. Despite a slow start to the season, Vladislav Namestnikov is one of the few forwards who has provided some valuable depth scoring to the Jets offence. In 48 games, Namestnikov has 7 goals and 5 assists for 12 points. The Jets depth scoring slowly continues to improve, and Namestnikov’s overall play has been more positively noticeable since he’s settled on the 3rd line.

After returning from injury and playing his 1st game of the season, Matthew Tkachuk is ready to once again make an impact in the Panthers lineup. Tkachuk’s career high in goals is 42 back in 2021-22, and now that he’s healthy again he’ll be trying to get on the scoresheet early and often. In 52 games last season, Tkachuk had 22 goals and 35 assists for 57 points. Although he’s not on the top line with Reinhart, who leads the Panthers in points this season, the Jets will need to watch out for Tkachuk often, who continues to be a scoring and physical threat whenever he’s on the ice.

Puck drop in Winnipeg is set for just after 7:00 pm CST. Tonight’s game will be a chance for the Jets to get out of the bottom five in the league standings, so they’d like to continue their recent success against this Atlantic Division opponent. Stay tuned here at Jets Nation for a recap of the action, as the Jets look to defeat the back to back Stanley Cup Champions.