had a lot of success and he walks in there with instant succ

WINNIPEG Womens Esa Lindell Jersey , Manitoba — If there was a trophy for most assists in a season, Blake Wheeler would be one of the early favorites to hoist it at the end of the season. The Winnipeg Jets captain had a five-point night in a 5-2 win over the Colorado Avalanche on Friday at Bell MTS Place, setting up the first four goals and scoring the last into an empty net.That performance gave Wheeler 18 assists in 15 games, the second-highest assist total in the league behind Colorado’s Mikko Rantanen, who had 19. Wheeler led the NHL in assists last season with 68 and has more than any other player since the start of the 2015-16 season.Article continues below ...Wheeler hopes to continue his leading ways when the Jets host the New Jersey Devils on Sunday night. The Devils come to town on the heels of a 6-1 shellacking from the Toronto Maple Leafs on Friday and have lost five of their last six, being outscored 29-15 in the process. Winnipeg is the last stop on a season-high seven-game road trip.At the same time as Wheeler is catching fire, sniper Patrik Laine appears to have regained his scoring touch for the Jets. He notched his fifth goal in three games on Friday to take the team lead with eight. He has just three goals in his first 12 games.Defenseman Josh Morrissey, who had one assist against Colorado, had an idea Wheeler was ready for a big night after sharing a ride to the rink with him. “You could tell he was ready to go. He’s a big guy that has so much skill and competes so hard,” he said. “Blake took it to another level. He’s a guy that drives our bus every single day in practice Jamie Benn Jersey , in the gym and basically in every aspect of being a professional hockey player. He’s the guy that we follow.”The Devils will need better goaltending if they want to compete with the Jets. Goalie Keith Kincaid stopped a number of excellent scoring opportunities by the Leafs but gave up one floater to Morgan Rielly while being screened by three of his teammates.In the previous game, a 7-3 loss against the Ottawa Senators, veteran Corey Schneider was pulled after giving up four goals on 22 shots.“We’ll be fine in the end,” Kincaid said. “This will just make us stronger. We have to build as a team. It’s not going to be easy. Everybody has to be together and work hard.”Coach John Hynes was particularly frustrated with his team’s breakout against the Leafs.“We have to play better. On four out of the six goals, we had the puck on our tape coming out of the zone, so our puck execution needs to be better. We’ll have to do that better against Winnipeg,” he said.The Rocket Richard Trophy, named in honor of the Montreal Canadiens legend who led the league in goal scoring five times in the 1940s and 1950s, has been awarded since 1999 to the league’s top goal scorer.The player with the most total points is given the Art Ross Trophy, named in honor of a former player and executive. A trophy to the top playmaker could be named after Wayne Gretzky http://www.officialstarsproonline.com/authentic-adidas-jason-spezza-jersey , who retired in 1999 with 1,963 assists. He has more assists than any other player has total points. DALLAS (AP) When Barry Trotz left the Washington Capitals fresh off winning the Stanley Cup, the New York Islanders couldn’t move fast enough to talk to him.Minutes after word circulated that Trotz resigned from the Capitals, Islanders president of hockey operations Lou Lamoriello got in touch. On Thursday, the Islanders hired Trotz and hope to benefit from the first Stanley Cup-winning coach leaving his team in a contract dispute in 24 years.”It’s certainly not something that you see every day,” Lamoriello said Thursday after the NHL general managers meeting. ”But I think we’re the fortunate recipient of it that we were able to have him come in our organization.”The Capitals weren’t willing to pay top dollar to keep Trotz in the fold, so the Islanders pounced and have a fresh selling point to try to retain face of the franchise John Tavares. Trotz, who brings his resume with the fifth-most wins in NHL history, two Presidents’ Trophy seasons and now a Stanley Cup, has already been in touch with Tavares John Klingberg Jersey , a 27-year-old point-a-game center who can begin speaking with other teams next week and become a free agent July 1.”That’s something that really is John’s mind,” Lamoriello said. ”We don’t know what he’s thinking, but certainly he’s a very important part of this franchise.”Trotz considers himself one piece of the puzzle of re-signing Tavares and believes the process is in good hands with Lamoriello, who won the Cup three times as New Jersey’s GM and also helped turn Toronto back into a playoff team.”If you know anything about those two parties, they are of the highest integrity, both of those gentlemen,” Trotz said of Lamoriello and Tavares. ”I think that they’ll have great dialogue and we’re hoping to have John be a part of it.”Trotz is now a part of it after the Islanders gave him the kind of long-term, big-money contract the Capitals weren’t willing to commit to the 55-year-old who coached them the past four seasons. The deal is reportedly for five years at $4 million or more annually, more than double what he would have made in Washington.After hoping the Capitals would renegotiate the automatic two-year extension that kicked in for winning a Cup and offered only a $300,000 raise to about $2 million Mattias Janmark Jersey , Trotz took the chance on leaving and found an immediate home three days after resigning.”It’s good to be wanted,” Trotz said. ”It happened really quickly because you’re going from one emotion of winning the Cup to the next emotion of leaving the team you just won a Cup with and you have to make some quick decisions.”The Capitals were barely done celebrating their first championship in franchise history when GM Brian MacLellan and Trotz sat down to talk contract. Trotz thought the deal he had with the Capitals was ”a little unfair based on value around the league,” thanks in large part to the $50 million, eight-year contract Toronto’s Mike Babcock signed in 2015 that helped raise coaching salaries.When it was clear to each side right away there wasn’t a fit, Trotz asked for and was granted his release. MacLellan wasn’t surprised Trotz immediately went to the Islanders.”Could’ve guaranteed it,” MacLellan said. ”I’m happy for him. I think he got what he wanted, and that’s a good opportunity for him. It’s a good payday for him, too. So it worked out good.”It worked out great for the Islanders, who go from GM Garth Snow and previously inexperienced coach Doug Weight to Lamoriello and Trotz. They already have rookie of the year Mathew Barzal as a building block of the future, and now they have a coach who brings with him a shiny new Cup ring.”What we need is we need an individual who can walk in that locker room with the players who are there who have not really had a lot of success and he walks in there with instant success Radek Faksa Jersey ,” Lamoriello said. ”People follow that, and I think that that’s a very important thing for these young men.”In the past 40 years, Trotz is just the fifth coach not to return to a Stanley Cup winner and the first since Scotty Bowman retired after winning with Detroit in 2002. Mike Keenan in 1994 was the last coach to leave a Cup champion in a contract dispute when he did not return to the New York Rangers.MacLellan will move on to interviewing associate coach Todd Reirden to replace Trotz, but the strangeness of this situation isn’t lost on the veteran hockey executive.”It’s so weird,” MacLellan said. ”It’s awkward. It’s weird. I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t know what we could do with it.”MacLellan said Trotz wanted to be compensated among the top four or five coaches in the NHL. His deal with the Islanders puts him behind Babcock, Chicago’s Joel Quenneville and Montreal’s Claude Julien – all fellow Cup winners – but ahead of most of the rest of the league.—