Bryan Little could play for the Winnipeg Jets when the NHL season resumes from the pause due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus, coach Paul Maurice said Wednesday.
The forward has not played since being hit in the side of the head by a shot from Jets forward Nikolaj Ehlers against the New Jersey Devils on Nov. 5. Little sustained a concussion and punctured eardrum and needed more than 20 stitches. He returned to practice in a non-contact jersey Jan. 13, but the Jets announced Feb. 15 that he would be out for the rest of the season because he was having surgery on his eardrum the following week.
The NHL regular season was paused March 12 and was scheduled to end April 4.
"All things are possible, [but] I don't have an answer yet," Maurice said. "He's going to have to get tested but yes, (it's possible).
"Now if we're talking about playing in July, August or September, all of these players on every team they thought weren't going to be available until next year might be available."
Little missed the first nine games of the season after being hit in the head by Minnesota Wild center Luke Kunin in the final preseason game Sept. 29. He returned Oct. 20 and had five points (two goals, three assists) in seven games, including an overtime goal against the Calgary Flames on Oct. 26 in the 2019 Tim Hortons NHL Heritage Classic in Regina, Saskatchewan.
If Little is available when the season resumes, he could be a big addition for the Jets. Though he has played wing, Little, who has 521 points (217 goals, 304 assists) in 843 games with the Atlanta Thrashers and Jets, has most often been Winnipeg's second-line center.
The Jets had 324 man-games lost when the season paused, but Winnipeg (37-28-6) was starting to get injured players back, including forwards Adam Lowry (upper body) and Mathieu Perreault (upper body), before the pause and had won four straight games. The Jets hold the first wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Western Conference and trail the Dallas Stars by two points for third place in the Central Division.
"I should qualify all this by saying this is a small-world thing, how the team is playing," Maurice said. "People are dealing with serious matters. My parents are of an age where you'd be concerned, and I have a brother who's a doctor and his wife's a doctor, so we're all impacted by something more significant.
"I was not angry (by the pause), but frustrated. I truly felt we had paid almost this ridiculous price to get to where we got to, with all of our injuries and all of the things that had happened to us. ... We were getting healthy and we'd won four in a row and we had added two players (forward Cody Eakin and defenseman Dylan DeMelo, prior to the 2020 NHL Trade Deadline). We felt good and strong and right, and you could see all the things starting to fall into place.
" … [But] when you kind of got your eyes off hockey and realized there's a far bigger situation going on, the frustration (from the pause) disappeared. You're concerned for your family, for your team's family and for the fans and for Winnipeg, Manitoba and Canada. It just became a human concern for all of us."
Maurice said he's been spending plenty of time with his family in Winnipeg and feels he's had to focus on discipline as much as ever, considering there's no timeframe for when the season may resume.
"There are four basic pieces to our job," he said. "You run the bench, you run practice and plan for that, you deal with the media, and other than that, you watch hockey. That's basically all you do. Now three of those are kind of gone, so there's way more time to do the fourth thing.
"I've talked to a couple of coaches who are in the playoff mix for sure no matter what happens, and they're already doing work on the four or five teams they think they might get in the first round. The challenge isn't having stuff to do, it's to not be chasing a thousand things around."
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