The Winnipeg Jets continue their preseason tune up games on Friday night in Minnesota against the Wild at 7 pm CT. The Jets began their preseason with a 5-2 loss to the Wild nearly a week ago, followed by a 3-2 OT loss to the Oilers in Edmonton. The Jets played their best game of the preseason at home on Wednesday night with a 6-1 win over the Oilers. The Jets now sit at 1-1-1 in the preseason with 3 games to go, and are looking to continue where they left off on Wednesday night.

The Jets hit the ice this morning for day 8 of training camp. Head coach Scott Arniel appeared to be configuring his line combinations in a way that could closely resemble the lineup on opening night.

The top 6 was made up of the Connor-Scheifele-Vilardi trio followed by the projected 2nd line of Ehlers-Namestnikov-Perfetti. The LAN line (Niederreiter-Lowry-Appleton) lined up as line 3, and Barron-Kupari-Iafallo rounded out the forwards. Jaret Anderson-Dolan and David Gustafsson skated as the extra forwards.

On defense, the Jets went with the familiar Morrissey-DeMelo duo, followed by Lundmark-Pionk and Fleury-Miller. Dylan Coghlan and Elias Salomonsson skated as the extra defenceman. There will likely be some changes to the lineup for the preseason game tomorrow, as the Jets may look to give some young players a final game before the next round of cuts.

Scott Arniel met with the media at camp this morning, and provided several injury updates. 3 Jets defence are dealing with injuries at the moment, but only 1 of them appears to be of concern. Arniel said that Logan Stanley has a bit of a tweak that’s being evaluated, but it doesn’t look to be a big concern at this time. You may have heard that Ville Heinola is out for at least 4 weeks, after having surgery on his ankle, followed by a recently discovered infection in the same ankle.

It’s too soon to know when Heinola could return, so Arniel said that there is no timetable set at this moment. Finally, Dylan Samberg was absent from practice today after being roughed up last game, but he’s expected to be back for the game on Friday night against the Wild. The concern about these injuries was brought up with Arniel this morning, as the Jets now may need to figure out a 3rd left defenceman if any of these injuries become long-term.

As opening night on October 9th approaches, expect the Jets to continue to make cuts and use more experienced lineups for the last few preseason games. After Friday night’s game, the Jets will conclude the preseason with a pair of games against the Calgary Flames. The Jets host the Flames on October 2nd, and the Flames host the Jets on October 4th.

The anticipation for the 2024-25 regular season is building by the day. The preseason intensity will be ramped up in the next week as players fight for a potential roster spot on this Jets team that appears to have a solid amount depth at every position. Stay tuned for post game coverage tomorrow night!