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Jets' Maurice still tinkering as he looks to settle his lines ahead of playoffs

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Paul Maurice is looking to settle his lines ahead of the playoffs, but he’s still a week or so away from getting doing so.

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The tenured Winnipeg Jets head coach still has a few looks he wants to get an assessment on before tightening his four trios up.

“So that anything you might contemplate into the playoffs you’ve looked at once or twice so there’s a bit of a familiarity,” he said on Friday morning in Montreal.

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Part of it is finding the right style of line for the style of game the Jets will play against.

“What’s effective in heavier games? In speed games? (Against) rush teams? All those kinds of things — what’s your best lineup?” Maurice said.

Finding those optimal line combinations has hit a bit of a snag in the road, too, with Blake Wheeler missing from the Jets’ current five-game road trip out east due to a concussion. That mean’s Maurice’s ideal timeline could change, depending on how Wheeler’s recovery goes. And there’s also a trade deadline to contend with, although it’s not expected that general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff makes any moves on forward.

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For now, there’s an opportunity here to mix and match. Injuries are a part of the game, and the playoffs provide no immunity to them, so Maurice, in a round-about way, has been afforded a few games here to tinker.

For a guy such as Andrew Copp, who went from the third line pre-Wheeler injury to the second line and then the first in Winnipeg’s first game without their captain, the shuffles aren’t that big of a deal — even late in the season when one might think lines would be looking for some consistency.

“I’m comfortable and obviously, going through the last few years, I’ve been through a lot of different line changes – so I’m comfortable in that aspect,” Copp said.

But he’s not oblivious to the chemistry aspect, either.

“I don’t think I want to say doesn’t matter because, you like to have chemistry – especially you know when a line is going pretty well – that you don’t want to say just change things up just for the sake of changing things up,” he said.  “But with that said, I think Paul wants to see – I mean obviously (Wheeler) goes out – a few things just in preparation for the last little stretch, so in the playoffs, those are things that he can get to or different combinations that he sees that could work.

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“Just so there’s a comfort level a little bit with playing with different guys.”

Copp feels he’s built chemistry with anyone and everyone on the roster at this point, from his tight bond with Adam Lowry to guys like Mark Scheifele and Nikolaj Ehlers.

Paul Stastny is in the same boat, too.

A veteran of 15 NHL seasons, the Quebec City native has seen his fair share of line combos in 985 games played.

“Throughout the year, you play with different guys so you have an idea of what works, what doesn’t work,” Stastny said. “I think when (Maurice) decides to juggle the lines a little bit, it’s not anything crazy. When he does make changes, he does try to keep two of the guys together, switch two players that kind of play a similar style and I’ve played with those other guys so it doesn’t make that big of a change.”

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Stastny said while the changes may seem seismic watching them on TV, in actuality, the players don’t view them that way because, more often than not, they’ve already sewn some of the fabric of familiarity.

“It might take a couple of shifts just to tinker with a little bit but after that, we’re just smooth sailing,” he said.

What Maurice doesn’t want to have to do in the playoffs, he said, is take something away from what you like because you’ve got something that’s really causing you a problem

“And you like to kind of get to those with an idea that if you’re pushing from behind, what do you need to have on the ice, if you’re shutting a game down what do you need to have on the ice,” he said.

In a perfect world, Maurice pegged the three-game series with the Toronto Maple Leafs at home as an ideal date to put together his finishing touches heading into the postseason. His team will get three days off between playing the Edmonton Oilers and dropping the puck against the current North Division leaders on April 21.

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Of course, that will depend on Wheeler’s well-being and everyone else’s health who is currently well.

Jets ink Lundmark

The Jets signed 20-year-old Swedish defenceman Simon Lundmark to a three-year, entry-level contract on Friday.

Lundmark was taken 51st overall in the second round of the 2019 NHL draft and has spent the past four seasons with Linkopings in the Swedish Elite League.

Lundmark, who stands 6-foot-1 and weighs in at 201 pounds, set personal bests in Sweden this year, scoring twice and adding eight assists in 47 games.

From Stockholm, the right-shot has two goals and 16 points in 118 games in the SHL.

sbilleck@postmedia.com

Twitter: @scottbilleck

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