DALLAS \u2013 Brayden Yager is expected to make his season debut tonight when the Winnipeg Jets close out a two-game road trip against the Dallas Stars.<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old forward was recalled from the Manitoba Moose on Monday, where he has five goals and nine points in six games to start the American Hockey League season. Now, three days later, he\u2019ll be on the wing with Adam Lowry in the middle and Isak Rosen on the other side.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt goes back to last year, coming up, getting his feet wet, and getting a taste of the pace, the structure, and everything it takes to be an effective NHL player,\u201d said Lowry. \u201cI think that\u2019s the biggest thing for young guys. You come out of junior, you\u2019re used to having the puck on your stick, you\u2019re used to making plays, you\u2019re used to putting up big numbers. Then you get into the pro game and it doesn\u2019t necessarily happen every night. It\u2019s finding different ways to be consistent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yager played in three games to close out the 2025-26 season and comes into tonight looking for his first NHL point. That will come eventually, of course, but the lessons Yager learned in those games \u2013 as well as the Calder Cup Playoffs where he had four assists in seven games \u2013 stuck with him all summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first three strides is a big thing for the NHL,\u201d said Yager. \u201cGetting the puck and moving your feet, and another thing I kind of found as I played the games was just puck protection and being able to hold onto the puck, and then the skill kind of takes over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though Yager is a natural centre, he\u2019s had experience playing on the wing (including at the IIHF World Junior Championship). The way Lowry sees it, he and Yager could end up swapping spots depending on how each particular shift unfolds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want him necessarily to change how he\u2019s playing just because he\u2019s on the wing,\u201d said Lowry. \u201cI want him to hold onto pucks, I want him to take the middle of the ice. If he\u2019s the first guy back, he can take low, neutral zone regroups there is a lot of interchangeability. He\u2019s a really smart player. The transition going from one to the other won\u2019t be a big jump for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
At practice on Wednesday at American Airlines Center, the lines looked like this, but the 11:30 am CT morning skate will be the best indication of any changes:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DALLAS \u2013 Brayden Yager is expected to make his season debut tonight when the Winnipeg Jets close out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":941798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-941797","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\/941797","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=941797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/941798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}