It hasn't been easy for J.J. Daigneault to ice a consistent lineup this season.
The Halifax Mooseheads head coach relies on call-up players for virtually every game, either because of injuries, suspensions or players unavailable to him because of COVID-19 travel restrictons. Heading in to Wednesday's road game against the Charlottetown Islanders, Daigneault had yet to see forwards Senna Peeters, Zack Jones and Attilio Biasca in uniform.
Jones was expected to make his debut after getting clearance to enter Nova Scotia from the United States two weeks ago and completing his quarantine on Tuesday but there isn't any change in the status of the two Europeans.
"Zack has been skating on his own for 10 days and his conditioning obviously isn't game conditioning yet because he hasn't played since March so I'm going to try to gauge his ice time very delicately at first," Daigneault said. "It's nice to get him back but it's been a challenging year.
"Without Zack and our European players, it's been hard for us just to have a practice with the right amount of bodies but it's also been an opportunity for the 16-year-olds to come here and have some quality ice time."
With the vacuum created by those key absences, first-year forwards Markus Vidicek, James Swan, Bobby Orr and Jordan Dumais have all had their turn on the first line and filled a prominent role every game so far. The same is true for defenceman Jake Furlong, while others like Alex Tessier and William Robitaille have also played more than expected.
"The young kids have reacted very well," Daigneault said. "If you look around the league with the teams that are playing right now, I don't think you see (rookies) having the success that our guys are having.
"I think it's great that they see we have confidence in them. It's not like we're putting them there because we have to; they really earned it. Vidicek is on the first power play, Swan is on the second power play with Furlong on the back side. Jordan Dumais is injured right now but he was doing really well on the PP early in the season too. They deserved to be there and they showed us they have a take-charge attitude as well. They seized the opportunity and they played up to their potential."
The hard results from all of those young players is the best proof. Orr, Vidicek, Dumais and Swan - in that order - are the team's top scorers after veterans Elliot Desnoyers and Zachary L'Heureux, while Furlong already has six assists in 14 games from the blue line.
"I was looking at some stats the other day because I saw that Raphael Lavoie was doing so well in Sweden right now. He has eight goals in 13 games over there," Daigneault said. "So out of curiousity, I looked at his stats page and I also looked at the amount of points he picked up as a 16-year-old with the Mooseheads. He had six goals and three assists in 36 games. Right now I'm looking at all those young kids and they all have at least that many points and they're all up close to a point per game.
"I think that's pretty amazing. They've shown us so far that they can really do the job."
But just as Jones is entering the mix, captain Justin Barron is exiting. The
fourth-year defenceman left for the Canadian World Junior tryout camp in Alberta earlier this week and could be away as long as six weeks if he makes the team.
"I addressed that with the guys (Tuesday) morning," Daigneault said. "I told them 'Guys, we're in the business of opportunities and JB might be gone for a month or maybe even two months if he goes to an NHL training camp.' This is an opportunity for the guys here; seize that moment.
"Obviously we missed JB at the start of the year when he was out and then he made a huge impact when he was back in our lineup, defending but also on the special teams. But we have kids like Cam Whynot who will fill that role. He'll be on the first PP and he's going to be our quarterback so he can take advantage of that opportunity. And (Brendan) Tomilson has been playing some great hockey this year. He's picking up some points but he's also defending well. Other veterans like (Jason) Horvath will need to keep playing steady games and be predictable. Those guys will have to chip in a little bit more but what I really hope is for the young guys to seize that ice time that's going to be given to them and make the most of it."
Notes: L'Heureux will return to the lineup against the Bathurst Titan on Friday after serving a four-game suspension. Dumais is not expected back until at least next week. Winger Cole Foston remains sidelined for a couple of more weeks with a lower body injury.
