The fourth line tonight features three players that have over 2500 games of NHL experience with Nino Niederreiter, Al Iafallo and Vlad Namestnikov.<\/p>\n
I mean, those two guys have been in the league for a while and played with them last year, year before, so very familiar with those guys,\u201d said Namestnikov.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it’s always a pleasure to play with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Namestnikov is another veteran who had a challenging season in 25-26 as he only played in 60 games and after recording back-to-back 35+ point campaigns, he had just 14 last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, last year, let’s just keep it last year. Yeah, lots of things went wrong, but those are excuses,\u201d said Namestnikov.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess that I don’t like to make excuses. As I said, had good summer. Ready to battle now and to go out there and be fully healthy and play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Camp is only eight days old, but tonight marks the Jets\u2019 fourth preseason game, and in just one week, they\u2019ll open the regular season against Boston. For Vladislav Namestnikov, entering his 14th NHL season, the wait is getting old. He\u2019s ready to put camp behind him and get the real season underway.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was way too long with summer. So, coming in, I mean, it felt pretty hard still. Like that you just get to play two games, and that’s pretty much the only change,\u201d said Namestnikov.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut other than that, the skates were still hard and everything. So it’s always good when it’s ending and the season’s starting. So everyone’s happy, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the other end of the NHL experience spectrum is defenceman Tyrel Bauer, who is looking to play his way onto the Jets\u2019 opening-night roster. Playing in his third preseason game, Bauer is paired with veteran Mario Ferraro. The Alberta product isn\u2019t looking too far ahead, choosing instead to keep his focus on the task at hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a quick one (training camp) this year. It happened fast. It came at you fast. The majority of it was you know before kind of we had a day off even,\u201d said Bauer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s been good in terms of tonight and looking ahead. I try to stay out of that as much as I can. Listen, I’m just grateful to be here and put my best foot forward every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Avalanche will likely dress close to what their opening night lineup will be and that means Bauer will be facing Nathan MacKinnon, Martin Necas and Nazem Kadri.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time you get everybody together on any team, it’s kind of that first look, right? So, you kind of feel like a fan sometimes sitting there and being like, \u2018Hey, like, wow, this is you know this is cool. Let’s see, let’s see how that everybody does.\u2019,\u201d said Bauer.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd every teams at that stage in training camp right now, and we’re all battling and fighting for spots or ice time or whatever different guy situations may be, but I think consensus is we’re all super excited.\u201d<\/p>\n
Puck drop is scheduled for 7:30 CT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fourth line tonight features three players that have over 2500 games of NHL experience with Nino Niederreiter,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":909506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-909505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909505","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=909505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/909506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}