Jets forward Gabriel Vilardi out 4-6 weeks with sprained MCL: Who moves up to replace him?

Winnipeg Jets forward Gabriel Vilardi will miss four to six weeks with a sprained MCL, the team announced Wednesday.

Vilardi left Tuesday’s game against the Los Angeles Kings midway through the first period after being hit against the boards by Blake Lizotte. Vilardi was ruled out with a lower-body injury and did not return.
A first-round selection by Los Angeles in 2017, Vilardi played his first four seasons with the Kings before being traded to Winnipeg in June. He has 41 goals and 38 assists through 155 career games.
The Jets are 1-2 through three games this season.

What Vilardi’s absence means for Jets

Vilardi started the season on Winnipeg’s top line with Mark Scheifele and Kyle Connor and demonstrated instant chemistry. Whether it was his spinning backhand pass to Connor early in the preseason or the multitude of chances those three players set up for each other in their first two games of the regular season, early returns on the Pierre-Luc Dubois trade centerpiece looked promising. There is no other Jets forward with the same combination of size, ability to protect the puck and vision to make plays through traffic into the middle of the ice.

Connor and Scheifele don’t need a player as good as Vilardi is to score; the big change is that Winnipeg’s forward group thins out as the Jets move players up to replace him. — Murat Ates, Jets staff writer

Which players? Who moves up?

Mason Appleton missed Wednesday’s practice, taking a maintenance day, but Rick Bowness told reporters he’s first in line for the top-line right-wing job. Appleton’s offensive ability is a precipitous drop from Vilardi’s: Appleton has never scored more than 25 points in a season, creates fewer chances for his linemates and finishes on a smaller percentage of his own shots. Bowness trusts him to win battles, though, whether breaking the puck out of his zone or along the boards in the offensive zone.

Bowness also said that Vladislav Namestnikov will take over second-line center duties, with Cole Perfetti moving to left wing and Nikolaj Ehlers staying on the right. My hunch is that this line is the Jets’ second line only in name and that Nino Niederreiter, Adam Lowry and Alex Iafallo — Winnipeg’s new “third” line — are going to get called over the boards a ton, especially at home. Ehlers’ minutes should get a boost, though, as he practiced on Winnipeg’s top power-play unit Wednesday.

Finally, David Gustafsson moves out of the press box and into the fire, joining Rasmus Kupari and Morgan Barron on Winnipeg’s fourth line. Kupari could get a boost if Appleton doesn’t work out higher up the lineup but Bowness has promoted Appleton before. — Ates

Does that make sense?

Bowness is asking a lot out of Appleton — too much — and that the Jets could get more mileage out of promoting a player like Niederreiter to that top line. They’d get the same competitiveness but with more efficacy; Niederreiter crashes the net and tends to bury about 20 goals a season. Meanwhile, Bowness clearly trusts Appleton’s two-way ability and I’m guessing a line of Iafallo, Lowry and Appleton could play similar shutdown minutes.

One thing seems clear — Bowness doesn’t trust Ehlers or Perfetti to play top competition yet. Call it an indictment of the coach, the players or attribute it to Ehlers’ injury during training camp making things tough out of the gate, but the minutes just aren’t there. Connor and Scheifele are Winnipeg’s five-on-five ice time leaders by miles; Appleton is third, then Ehlers, Perfetti and Niederreiter.

Maybe all of this is about Appleton’s handedness as a right-shooting forward on a team with so few of them. Scheifele, Appleton and Kupari are Winnipeg’s only right-shooting forwards on the roster right now. — Ates

What about trades, call-ups or outside help?

The Jets will call a forward up from Manitoba. Traditionally, I’d assume that forward to be a veteran like Dominic Toninato (who shoots left), Kristian Reichel (who shoots right) or Axel Jonsson-Fjallby (who shoots left.) Right-shooting forward Parker Ford added his name to the list of sensible call-ups with an intense, competitive and productive training camp. We could soon find out just how much the undrafted 23-year-old from Rhode Island who shares an alma mater with Brandon Tanev impressed Jets brass.

What about Brad Lambert? Last season, I would have scoffed at the idea — even in the case of a top-six injury like Vilardi’s. Lambert had yet to establish himself as a truly impactful offensive forward in the AHL. It’s hard to say he’s accomplished that with too much confidence after two games so far this season but Lambert, now 19 years old, has excelled early, with two goals and an assist in three games. I tend to think that 20-year-old forward Nikita Chibrikov plays a better puck possession game and is closer to being NHL-ready but Lambert has been the more impressive of the two, despite Chibrikov’s three points in two games. Recall as well that Chibrikov was hurt during part of Jets camp.

Finally, it’s been reported that the Jets have expressed interest in Vancouver’s Conor Garland. I’m not sure that anything is imminent on that front but Garland is a right-shooting forward coming off of a 46-point season for the Canucks. He’s a solid playmaker and contributes enough offense to fit in the middle-six but is expensive, at $4.95 million AAV. — Ates

Required reading

(Photo: Jonathan Kozub / NHLI via Getty Images)