The Winnipeg Jets face roster vacancies after key departures in free agency. This opens doors for young talents like Nikita Chibrikov and Ville Heinola to potentially secure spots on the starting lineup.
They lost second-line centre Sean Monahan and winger Tyler Toffoli to free agency and promising centre/winger Cole Perfetti — a restricted free agent — has yet to re-sign.
“Yeah, it’s more confidence for me,” Chibrikov said after the Jets opened training camp at Winnipeg's Hockey For All Centre on Thursday. “Feeling more comfortable. Everything is better. My hockey, my mind, outside of the rink, my language.” The five-foot-nine, 160-pound Russian also got into the last Jets regular-season game last year and impressed with his tenacity while scoring his first NHL goal.
The Jets also lost veteran defencemen Brenden Dillon and Nate Schmidt , which opens at least one roster spot for the likes of Ville Heinola, Elias Salomonsson, Colin Miller and others.“It’s exciting times for me,” he said. “There’s probably definitely some opportunities for me. It doesn’t change my mindset at all. It’s been the same every year when I want to steal someone’s job and make the team. That’s my only goal this year — to make the team and play well.
“Obviously, the guys that were moving on were great teammates,” said defenceman Josh Morrissey. “They were veteran guys with a lot of experience in the league. So, now some other guys are going to have an opportunity that I’m excited about. "A lot of them had a good summer of training,” he said. “We were able to see them midsummer at development camp in a lot of cases ... That's kind of why you have that development camp — to kind of get a benchmark of where some people are at and then compare it to them when they get to training camp, see what kind of work has gone on in the summer there. You can see that a lot of guys have put in some meaningful time.
Winnipeg Jets NHL Young Players Training Camp Roster Changes
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