Blake Wheeler says he and teammate Ben Chiarot "hugged it out" and are ready to go to battle together Sunday night as opposed to against one another as they did in a practice scuffle the day before.
The Jets' captain -- whose name is in the Hart Trophy race as the league's most valuable player -- also took sole responsibility for the scrap with Chiarot, one which seemed to ignite when Wheeler fired a slap shot at Chiarot during a special teams drill Saturday. Reportedly, Chiarot and Mark Scheifele exchanged crosschecks in front of the net, and then Wheeler slapped the puck seemingly at the Jets defenseman before the pair dropped the gloves and took part in a spirited fight.
"I think people made him out to be the villain," Wheeler told reporters at Winnipeg's morning skate Sunday. "It was all me."
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Jets coach Paul Maurice downplayed the incident after it happened, but still tossed Wheeler from the rest of practice.
"I had a little bit of a bad day yesterday," explained Wheeler on Sunday. "Sent one a little bit high and tight at (Chiarot)."
Though he didn't explain why he sailed the shot at his teammate, Wheeler did admit he liked Chiarot's response.
"For me, I thought it was great," offered Wheeler. "If it were me in his position, I'd go after whoever did it, too. You love playing with guys that are competitive -- and that's the spirit of our team, we're competitive in every game, competitive in every practice.
"Sometimes those things are going to boil over a bit. Pretty much after it happened, we hugged it out in the room and the boys have been laughing about it for the past 24 hours."
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Wheeler compared the situation to how siblings fight and make up.
"I'm around these guys more than my own wife and kids," explained Wheeler. "At a certain point of time...a joke goes too far, a chirp goes too far, those things happen.
"At the end of the day, we're all boys. The roughhousing happens sometimes."
Not a laughing matter, though, is that defenseman Toby Enstrom has been ruled out for the rest of the regular season by Maurice because of a "number of issues" physically. The coach hopes the rest allows Enstrom to play once the playoffs start.
The Jets, sitting on a franchise-record 100 points, host the Nashville Predators on Sunday, a contest pitting two of the top teams in the national Hockey League -- and a possible second-round playoff preview.