The Ducks were in St. Paul last night taking on the Wild and looking to play spoilers which it appeared they might do holding a 2-1 lead late in the game. Minnesota tied the game with just 22 seconds left in the 3rd to force OT which clinched them the first wild card spot, clinched the second one for the Blues and eliminated the Flames from playoff contention. Today, they are in Winnipeg where they will conclude their regular season before heading home for the summer. While they will not be a playoff team for the seventh straight season they did take a step forward from the 2023-24 campaign gaining 20 points on that team with one game to play.
The Jets got welcome news on Tuesday as Gabriel Vilardi had resumed skating while Dylan Samberg was skating with his teammates no worse for wear after blocking a shot against the Oilers on Sunday and leaving the game. The news wasn’t as good on Nikolaj Ehlers who is now week-to-week after the game against the Hawks in Chicago on Saturday night after clipping skates with the linesman.
Skate news:
As you can see Nino Niederreiter moves up in the absence of Nikolaj Ehlers and David Gustafsson returns to the lineup.
Jets projected lines & D pairs:
Connor-Scheifele-Iafallo Niederreiter-Namestnikov-Perfetti Tanev-Lowry-Appleton
Gustafsson – Barron – JAD
Morrissey-DeMelo Samberg-Pionk
Stanley-Schenn
Hellebuyck
Ducks projected lines & D pairs:
Gauthier -Carlsson – Killorn Zegras – McTavish – Colangelo Vatrano – Strome – Terry
Lundestrom – Washe – Harkins
Lacombe – Gudas Zellweger – Trouba
Moore – Helleson
Husso
Based on how they lined up last night against the Wild as per the team twitter. Lukas Dostal had the net last night so the expectation is Ville Husso will get it tonight.
Players media availability:
Coach media availability
:
Topics: 1) Knowing their first round opponent. 2) Resting guys/keeping them in game mode (:40) 3) Advantages of compartmentalizing (1:37) 4) Alex Iafallo extension thoughts (2:16) 5) Iafallo taking less money than available on open market (3:19) 6) Focus on process vs results (4:28) 7) Chance to finish with most points of any Jets team ever (5:12) 8) Did Gabriel Vilardi skate today? Did Rasmus Kupari? (6:00)
9) The Schenn brothers playing each other in playoffs (6:08)
Up Next
:
Puck drop is at 6 PM CDT. Be sure to head over to illegalcurve.com following the game for a recap of the action. You can join us on our YouTube channel for the Illegal Curve Post-Game Show around 8:40 PM CDT as we discuss and analyze the results of the game.
