Jets At Blues Morning Open Thread: Allen Gets A Break As Hutton Starts

The Winnipeg Jets... wait... stop me if you've heard this... aren't very good.

I know, I know. After fifteen years in the league, they're still average at best, because while you can take the team out of Atlanta you can't take the Atlanta out of a team. Slowly but surely the Jets are trying to build their own identity, but tso many players remain from the Thrashers: Blake Wheeler, Dustin Byfuglien, Mark Stuart, Bryan Little, Alexander Burmistrov, Chris Thorburn, Paul Postma, Ben Chiarot, Tobias Enstrom. Ondrej Pavelec was the biggest tie to the Atlanta club, but the Thrashers' goalie of the future finally proved himself worthy of a future in the AHL.

The Jets do have some very exciting young players to build around in Jacob Trouba, Mark Scheifele, Nikolaj Ehlers, and second overall pick Patrick Laine. The future for the team should be fine. The current team, however, is again solidly middle of the pack.

They were defeated Thursday night by the Edmonton Oilers 6-3. Scoring from Scheifele (13 goals, 13 assists) and Laine (15 goals, 6 assists) is being balanced out by a streak of poorly thought out penalties are killing the team. While the Blues have one of the best penalty kills in the league, the Jets have one of the worst (25th) and three of the Oilers's six goals the other night came on the power play.

Gameplan: goad the Jets into doing something stupid, then score. Seems doable.

This is your morning open thread. Check back a little later on for a Lighting the Lamp from Rick, your preview in which we discuss the Jets' "team identity" problems," and your GameDay Thread. While you're waiting for the puck to drop, head to Arctic Ice Hockey and say hello to the excellent team up there.