Bowness moves Ehlers to top line, shakes up defence pairings as ...

Riding a six-game losing streak that has an eerily familiar feeling to it, the Winnipeg Jets shuffled the deck ahead of Monday’s home game against the Los Angeles Kings.  

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Head coach Rick Bowness elevated Nikolaj Ehlers to left wing on the top line with Mark Scheifele and Gabriel Vilardi, while dropping struggling sniper Kyle Connor to the second line, where he’ll play with Sean Monahan and either Tyler Toffoli (game-time decision due to illness) or Cole Perfetti.  

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Bowness also changed up all of his defence pairings, including a top-four that has been the same throughout the season to this point.  

Josh Morrissey and Neal Pionk will play together on one pairing, Nate Schmidt will be alongside Brenden Dillon and Dylan DeMelo will skate with Dylan Samberg.  

Logan Stanley, who played four straight games and made an impact with his physical efforts, comes out of the line-up. 

“We have to change something up, at six games in a row,” Bowness said after holding a meeting with the players after the gameday skate at Canada Life Centre Monday morning. 

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“It’s a little bit of everything. You’ve got to try different things. We can’t keep running back the same pairs, we can’t keep running back the same lines. That’s enough. Six games in a row. It’s nice to say we hung in there and we had a chance, but there’s no moral victories. We have to find a way to get the two points.” 

The Jets are mired in their worst slump of the season and are coming off a 3-2 loss to the non-playoff Ottawa Senators at home on Saturday night. It’s not all that different from last season, when the Jets fell from the top of the standings to barely making the playoffs with a late-season swoon. 

Fans booed as the team left the ice on Saturday following a lacklustre performance from the home team.

Just a couple weeks ago, the Jets were tied for first place in the Central Division and now they’re nine points behind the first-place Dallas Stars and six behind the second-place Colorado Avalanche with only eight games left in the regular season.  

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They still need a few wins to ensure themselves of a playoff spot and Bowness is hopeful that a shake-up of the line-up will make a difference. He also talked about process and structure in his meeting with the players. 

“In our structure, we take pride in when we don’t have the puck, all four lines looking the same, pressuring the same,” Bowness said. “That’s been very inconsistent. Our structure has broken down way too many times. You see guys giving up four-on-ones. That’s not our team. That’s a breakdown in the structure. Those are the things that we’re going to keep pounding at until we straighten it out.” 

The moves were not lost on the Jets players. It’s a bit unusual to give every defenceman a new partner for a game this late in the season, especially when the team is seemingly playoff bound, but clearly desperate times call for desperate measures.  

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“It’s just a wake-up call,” Dillon said. “We’ve lost six in a row here and we need to get this thing going. 

“At this stage, with eight games left, everything is geared toward playoffs,” Dillon said. “For you, individually as a player, you need to get your game where you want it to be and for line combinations, it’s about what’s ultimately going to get us clicking the best. For the D pairs, specifically, it’s obviously unique. But we’ve all played with each other at some point over the last couple years.” 

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Laurent Brossoit will start in goal for the Jets against the Kings, who currently hold the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference with 87 points. They are five points up on the St. Louis Blues for the final playoff spot.  

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The game will also feature the return of former Jets centre Pierre-Luc Dubois, who was traded to the Kings in a blockbuster last summer, with Winnipeg getting Vilardi, Alex Iafallo and Rasmus Kupari in return.  

Dubois, who also played here with the Kings back in October, has had a rough go if it in his first season with the Kings. He has just 15 goals and 35 points in 73 games and has a minus-12 rating.  

He’s been playing better lately and has a goal and six assists in the last 10 games. 

“It will be fun,” said Dubois, whose parents still live in Winnipeg. 

“My mom is coming to the game. She didn’t come the first time because she didn’t want to hear the boos. I told her that this time, you’re probably still going to hear them. But it will be fun to play in front of her. It’s always special playing in front of your family.” 

Monday’s game is slated to begin shortly after 8 p.m., at Canada Life Centre. 

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