‘At the very most you might look at a fine’: Maurice believes Morrissey will avoid suspension

Winnipeg Jets defenceman Josh Morrissey was handed a hearing from the NHL for a high crosscheck on Minnesota’s Eric Staal in Tuesday’s game four.

Head coach Paul Maurice said he would be surprised if Morrissey missed game five Friday.

“I’m not surprised there is a hearing. You guys have been running it for a day and a half pretty hard,” said Maurice. “There’s no intent. There’s a penalty, (the refs) missed it. At the very most you might look at a fine.”

If Morrissey was to be handed a suspension, it would be a hit to the Jets already depleted blue line.

With Toby Enstrom, Dmitri Kulikov and Tyler Myers out with injuries, players like Ben Chiarot and Joe Morrow are logging more minutes with big assignments on the back end.

“They’ve kind of moved out of being depth defensemen to being key pieces,” praised Maurice, “We may have to flip people from left to right, but we’ll handle it.”

Now up three games to one, the Jets have two days rest before having the chance to clinch the series at home Friday.

“I find with teams facing elimination there is freedom in their game. Certainly they’ll come with all their speed as well as they can and we’ll have to be ripe and ready. But the hockey part of it itself, most importantly that can’t change,” said Maurice.

Puck drop Friday night is 6:30 p.m. at Bell MTS Place.