Bet you thought we forgot about this!

On the contrary, we wanted to wait a little closer to the start of pre-season hockey before we got into the real heart of the tournament. In the first round we saw many lopsided battles as obvious favorites were paired against players who while still popular couldn’t hang with the upper elite. Now, with a little under two weeks left before we have our first Winnipeg Jets preseason game against the Minnesota Wild we start round two with a battle of bruising defensemen.

In the first round, Big Buff got by Jacob’s tag team partner (and player who the Jets still haven’t signed to any kind of deal as of press time, not that we’re getting nervous here or anything, no, not us) Josh Morrissey and did so in rather convincing fashion.

Jacob meanwhile eased pass former Jet and now Modo Hockey defenseman Tobias Enstrom with a really nice victory.

We’ve made the argument on this site here that while Byfuglien is unquestionably the best defenseman on the team, the gap between him and Trouba – who it’s safe to say would rank as the team’s number two defenseman – is much smaller than it has been in years past. Of course there is still the small issue of Trouba’s future with the team as the Jets and Jacob recently agreed to an arbitrator’s ruled one year deal that pays Jacob much less than he’s probably worth and only for one year which means the Jets will have to deal with him as an RFA one more time next summer.

But for now, we want to know if Trouba has overtaken Buff as the most popular defenseman on the Jets, or if Big Buff’s big hitting still keeps him number one.