Scheifele excited for ‘little bit of a fresh start’ with Jets

Mark Scheifele is ready for change with the Winnipeg Jets this season.

The forward, entering his 12th NHL season, will play for a new coach in Rick Bowness, who was hired July 3. He replaced Dave Lowry, who was fired after the Jets (39-32-11) and missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2016-17.

Paul Maurice had been Jets coach since Scheifele’s rookie season, when he replaced Claude Noel on Jan. 12, 2014. Maurice resigned Dec. 17 and Lowry, an assistant, coached the final 54 games.

“I’ve been with pretty much the same coaching staff for my entire career,” Scheifele told the Jets website Tuesday. “It does seem like a little bit of a fresh start. We have new coaches. There’s obviously going to be some new ideas and obviously the same players, but I’ve loved our group of guys. We have a lot of fantastic guys on our team that I think from talking to them, they’re just as excited as I am about this upcoming season and what it’s going to hold and how things are going to change.”

The Jets were 30-23-3 in 2020-21. They swept the Edmonton Oilers in the Stanley Cup First Round before a four-game loss to the Montreal Canadiens in the best-of-7 second round.

“With the squad that we had last year, everyone was touting us as the next Stanley Cup champions,” Scheifele said at the Manitoba Open golf tournament in comments tweeted by the Winnipeg Sun. “I think we have a great team. We have a great group of guys.”

Scheifele questioned his future in Winnipeg after the Jets finished eight points behind the Nashville Predators for the second wild card from the Western Conference last season. The center has two seasons remaining on an eight-year, $49 million contract ($6.125 million average annual value) he agreed to July 8, 2016.

“When I was saying my comments, it was kind of strange how so many people took it in such a different way,” Scheifele said. “I started off the question that I was asked by saying, I love it here. I’ve been here for 10 years. It’s been an amazing community. It’s been amazing to me, and I want to be a Winnipeg Jet. And then everyone seemed to just start recording after I said that, so it’s kind of one of those things that I was confident that was going to be around.

“I knew there was going to be some hard questions to be asked on my part to management in terms of the direction of the team and I know a lot of the guys were kind of all in the same boat. The last couple years haven’t gone as planned, especially last year. I was confident I was…