{"id":389308,"date":"2026-01-04T00:33:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T00:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/389308\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T00:33:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T00:33:10","slug":"west-notes-jets-backlund-bedard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/389308\/","title":{"rendered":"West Notes: Jets, Backlund, Bedard"},"content":{"rendered":"

A year after the Jets won the Presidents\u2019 Trophy with a 116-point regular season, they enter play today in the exact opposite situation, sitting dead last in the NHL standings.\u00a0 While the team hasn\u2019t ruled out a second-half playoff push, Ken Wiebe of the Winnipeg Free Press argues<\/a> that one of Winnipeg GM Kevin Cheveldayoff\u2019s priorities should be to open up a spot on the roster for prospect Elias Salomonsson<\/a>.\u00a0 The 21-year-old is in his second season in North America and got his first taste of NHL action in late November with a four-game recall.\u00a0 However, an extended look down the stretch if the team is out of contention would give the Jets a chance to assess his overall readiness for 2026-27.\u00a0 That said, Winnipeg has eight blueliners on its active roster at the moment so some moves would need to be made first.\u00a0 Luke Schenn<\/a>, Colin Miller<\/a>, and Logan Stanley<\/a> are all on expiring deals; two of those would probably need to move before Salomonsson could get another recall.<\/p>\n

More from out West:<\/p>\n

Flames center Mikael Backlund<\/a> was a surprise omission from Sweden\u2019s Olympic team which was revealed<\/a> on Friday. However, he confirmed to Aftonbladet\u2019s Per Bjurman<\/a> that he is on their shortlist of potential injury replacements although he was passed over when William Karlsson<\/a> was ruled out for the event.\u00a0 Backlund is having a nice bounce-back season offensively, notching 10 goals and 25 assists in 40 games, putting him on pace to reach the 50-point mark for just the second time in the last nine seasons.\u00a0 However, that resurgence wasn\u2019t enough to secure him a spot on Sweden\u2019s group.
\nBlackhawks center Connor Bedard<\/a> has taken the next step in recovery from a shoulder injury as Mark Lazerus of The Athletic relays (Twitter link<\/a>) that he has resumed doing shooting drills. The 20-year-old was injured taking a faceoff around three weeks ago and remains out indefinitely.\u00a0 Before the injury, Bedard had gotten off to a very strong start to his season with 15 goals and 29 assists in just 31 games, setting himself up nicely with his contract expiring at the end of June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A year after the Jets won the Presidents\u2019 Trophy with a 116-point regular season, they enter play today…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[26,96,508,2095,5,1740,4,18],"class_list":{"0":"post-389308","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-calgary-flames","9":"tag-chicago-blackhawks","10":"tag-connor-bedard","11":"tag-elias-salomonsson","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-mikael-backlund","14":"tag-nhl","15":"tag-winnipeg-jets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}