WINNIPEG \u2013 There was plenty to be excited about as the Winnipeg Jets opened their preseason home schedule.<\/p>\n
Fans got their first glimpse of the team\u2019s new-look top two lines. Viggo Bj\u00f6rck made his home debut after being selected eighth overall back in June. And with anticipation building inside Canada Life Centre, there was no shortage of storylines to watch.<\/p>\n
But by the time the final horn sounded, one player had stolen the spotlight.<\/p>\n
Stuart Skinner.<\/p>\n
The Jets\u2019 27-year-old offseason addition put on a goaltending clinic, turning aside 31 shots to backstop Winnipeg to a hard-fought 3-1 victory over the Colorado Avalanche.<\/p>\n
On a night filled with new faces and fresh possibilities, Skinner gave Jets fans perhaps their most exciting reason yet to believe in what\u2019s ahead.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, just the love from the fans, especially at the beginning there before the anthem, that felt fantastic. The \u201cStu\u201d chants around a couple saves, those always feel really good,” said Skinner.<\/p>\n
“You can tell how much the fans love it here, how much they love their hockey, how much they love their players.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some slick work along the wall helped set up the Jets\u2019 opening goal of the night. Vladislav Namestnikov battled to keep the puck alive before shovelling it across to Isak Ros\u00e9n. The Swedish forward quickly spotted Gabriel Vilardi alone in the slot, and Vilardi wasted no time, snapping a quick shot past Scott Wedgewood at 18:55 to put Winnipeg on the board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WINNIPEG \u2013 There was plenty to be excited about as the Winnipeg Jets opened their preseason home schedule.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":905033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-905032","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\/905032","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=905032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/905033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}