Jets ready to move forward without Hellebuyck
It\u2019s a challenge to be without one of your top players, never mind an individual who holds every franchise record for goaltenders and has numerous individual awards, however, the players and head coach Scott Arniel believe they only have to worry about what they can control.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s one of the best goalies in the league, if not the best. He\u2019s been a big part of the core here for a long time and had an awful lot of success here,\u201d said Arniel after the second session Thursday at hockey for all centre.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a coach, you lose one of your key pieces, it\u2019s hard. But we also have to move forward. We have to move forward. It is what it is. We\u2019ve got 50 guys in camp right now that I gotta focus in on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kyle Connor is in the first year of his eight-year, $96 million extension, which he signed last October. While he acknowledged that having Hellebuyck in Winnipeg was one of the factors in his decision to sign, he made it clear it wasn\u2019t the only one.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe in that group and this management, and the city,\u201d said Connor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe group we assembled and just the support that we get here, it really means a lot to me to try to battle with this group and like I said, when I was thinking about the decision and ultimately decided to sign here, I couldn’t picture myself trying to battle for a Stanley Cup for a city or another group of guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
Staying with the theme of focusing on who was on the ice, Stuart Skinner brings an impressive resume to Winnipeg thanks to two trips to the Stanley Cup Final and 53 career postseason appearances with him. Gabriel Vilardi has been playing against Skinner going back to their time in American Hockey League.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve played against him since I was in Ontario and he was in Bakersfield. I think he’s a good goalie and working with him here the past week he’s pretty diligent in the stuff he does,\u201d said Vilardi.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I’m excited, and chatting with him he seems like a great guy. So, we’re going to welcome him and I’m sure the fans are going to welcome him as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
A new-look top six
Once the first group stepped onto the ice Thursday morning it was all about who was with who for line rushes and D pairings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jets ready to move forward without HellebuyckIt\u2019s a challenge to be without one of your top players, never…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":899789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-899788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=899788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/899789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}