The Winnipeg Jets’ .667 points percentage is sixth-best in the NHL since the Olympic break, and even though they can’t afford to treat that as a reason to overlook their problems, it’s motivating for Jets players.
Their pursuit of a perfect 5-0-0 run to close the season and the stunning late-season push to a playoff spot that might come with it has been admirable.
Mark Scheifele has scored his 900th point and tied Kyle Connor’s franchise record with 97 points on the season. Connor has sailed past 30 goals for the eighth time in his career and is two goals away from reaching the 40-goal plateau for the second time.
And Josh Morrissey is making so much of it work. When the Jets’ secondary scoring disappeared to start the season, Winnipeg started playing Morrissey behind the Connor-Scheifele duo as often as possible — almost as much as Morrissey’s ice time behind the other three lines combined. It has led to Winnipeg’s most decisive, dynamic offence and helped cover defensive issues, too: Connor and Scheifele have outscored teams 44-30 with Morrissey on the ice and are getting beaten 33-24 with him on the bench.
The good news — and part of what has made Winnipeg’s late surge possible — is that the Jets are starting to get secondary scoring, too. This season, only four players have scored over half a point per game: Scheifele, Connor, Morrissey and Gabriel Vilardi. Seven Jets players accomplished that feat last season, with Vladislav Namestnikov missing by a single point.
But since the Olympic break, Cole Perfetti has 13 points in 21 games, and the Jets have also gotten points from Alex Iafallo, Jonathan Toews, Adam Lowry and Morgan Barron. Brad Lambert appears to have rediscovered high-end offensive instincts, Neal Pionk is producing again, and a truly horrific power play got three great bounces and seems to have come to life.
What a bittersweet moral victory.
Can’t the Jets do better than that, whether by making the playoffs after all their struggles or struggling again and earning a top-end NHL Draft pick? We’ll look at Winnipeg’s route to the playoffs, the lottery and more in this look at Jets trends.
Path to a playoff spot, updated
The Jets have 80 points and five games remaining. A perfect 5-0-0 record would take them to 90 points by season’s end.
They have also performed exactly as projected since we picked wins and losses for every game left on the schedule, which is a fun aside. (If we’re right about what comes next, the Jets will go 3-1-1 and close out the season with 87 points.) The Jets have 27 regulation wins, giving them the tiebreaker advantage against three of four rivals at the moment.
Those competitors:
• Nashville Predators: 84 points, four games left, 27 regulation wins
• Los Angeles Kings: 83 points, five games left, 19 regulation wins
• San Jose Sharks: 81 points, six games left, 25 regulation wins
• St. Louis Blues: 78 points, five games left, 29 regulation wins
The Jets don’t have complete control over their destiny. Enough of their opponents play each other to guarantee somebody will pick up points between now and the end of the season, and a 4-1-0 record for L.A. or 5-1-0 record for San Jose would sink even a flawless 5-0-0 Jets run.
It hurts, too, that the Kings and Sharks have the easiest remaining schedule. Los Angeles has two games against the Vancouver Canucks, one against the Calgary Flames, one against the Seattle Kraken and a presumed tougher matchup against the Edmonton Oilers at home. San Jose’s schedule is similar, with one game each against Edmonton, the Anaheim Ducks, Vancouver, Nashville, the Chicago Blackhawks and Winnipeg.
Let’s look at the Jets’ remaining games. They’re 4-3-3 against this group of competitors thus far:
• April 9 at St. Louis
• April 11 vs. the Philadelphia Flyers
• April 13 at the Vegas Golden Knights
• April 14 at the Utah Mammoth
• April 16 vs. San Jose
Can you imagine if April 16’s home game against San Jose had a playoff spot on the line?
The odds remain overwhelmingly against a playoff spot. I maintain my assertion that the Jets will play well but ultimately fall short. But there’s a reason they play the games — and how funny would it be if I wrote a season preview titled, “The Winnipeg Jets are going to struggle. Don’t count them out when they do,” then proceeded to count them out too soon?
The path to a top draft pick
Five teams in the Eastern Conference are projected to miss the playoffs but have better records than Winnipeg does now. This has major implications for Winnipeg’s draft pick.
If the Jets miss the playoffs and the standings remain as they are Wednesday, they’ll pick ninth. If the Jets make the playoffs, the earliest they can pick is 17th — even if they finish with a worse record than a pile of teams in the East that don’t make it. That drop-off is the difference between a projected second-line centre like Tynan Lawrence and a tier of players our analysts project to play further down an NHL lineup. (Corey Pronman projects a drop-off to that next tier starting at No. 9 overall, and Scott Wheeler’s lower tier starts at No. 12.)
Why is that such a big deal?
Remember that a 27-point version of Toews is Winnipeg’s biggest UFA signing of the Jets 2.0 era. If you ignore Toews’ games-played bonuses and determine “biggest signing” by percentage of cap hit, the Jets’ biggest UFA signing of the past 10 years is Gustav Nyquist. You have to go back to Mathieu Perreault’s $3 million AAV signing back in 2014 to reach a bigger UFA signing relative to the salary cap. Every other Jets signing of note had been drafted and developed by Winnipeg or acquired by trade, then signed after they built a connection with the city.
But no-trade clauses are difficult to navigate, and the Jets’ prospect pool isn’t overflowing with tradeable excess; Winnipeg’s best route to its next top-end player is through a top pick. If Pronman and Wheeler are right, there might be a tiny bit of wiggle room. I’ve also been told by an NHL source with draft expertise that the drop-off will start after pick No. 7. This season’s accidental misery is a unique opportunity.
Jonathan Toews, Masterton Trophy nominee
The Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy is an annual award under the trusteeship of the Professional Hockey Writers Association and is given to the player “who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey.”
No Winnipeg Jet has ever won the award, but Toews has a fighting chance. It is difficult to imagine a more extreme example of perseverance and dedication to hockey than Toews’ health-induced departure from the NHL, worldwide journey in search of answers and return to the best hockey league in the world after two full seasons away from it.
“It’s definitely been super unpredictable, something that I never thought I would have to go through in my life,” Toews said Monday. “At the same time, I am very thankful for all of the struggles because, honestly, it is cliche, but it’s where I’ve learned the most about myself — about hockey, about life and all of those things.”
Many outside observers assumed Toews, 37, would retire, as his absence from the NHL stretched from one season to two. When he signed with Winnipeg last summer, it was reasonable to question what level he could get to. But Toews is one of the few players who have been forced to ask themselves who they were outside of hockey, then push through to the point that they could return to the sport.
I asked Toews about his oft-mentioned battle with his ego. How much of his struggle was psychological?
“How do you really separate the two, at the end of the day? I think we like to put things in categories and boxes, but they’re all part of the same thing,” Toews said. “For sure, it’s psychological, it’s physical, it’s emotional — it’s all of the above. So yeah, I was eager to get the opportunity in the NHL again, and I told myself I would do anything to go out there and help this team.”
And his identity?
“Sometimes you have a story in your head as far as who you are as a person and as a player,” he said. “I pride myself on my experience and what I accomplished in the game and the way I’ve played over the years. Like I said, sometimes you take a backseat or have a limited role, and it’s a new opportunity to learn — to learn how to be a better teammate, a better person. That’s part of it. When there are moments like that, you have to check that ego at the door.”
The winner will be selected in a poll of all chapters of the PHWA at the end of the regular season.
Is the power play fixed?
Scott Arniel moved Toews to Winnipeg’s top power-play unit Monday against Seattle, and suddenly the 28th-ranked power play caught fire. Winnipeg scored three power-play goals, with the first belonging to Toews, the second assisted by Toews and the third giving Scheifele his 900th career point.
The Jets are on pace to score 42 power-play goals this season — 21 fewer goals than the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Jets scored with the man advantage one year ago. Is it that simple, then? Toews has fixed things? Winnipeg’s going to rattle off five straight wins because of his faceoff prowess and his assist on the game-winning goal?
Obviously not. Toews did everything right on his goal, establishing inside position against Ryan Lindgren, knocking down a puck and putting it past Philipp Grubauer to score. Do that often enough and good things will happen, but Toews could make that boxout many times over without Vilardi’s deflection bouncing off the end boards and out front for Toews to try to knock down.
Toews’ assist was fortunate, too — a cross-crease pass attempt that hit two Kraken defenders’ skates before bouncing to Vilardi with time and space in the slot. Vilardi didn’t waste the freebie, burying his uncontested shot top shelf. Winnipeg’s third power-play goal came from Connor and went in off Lindgren’s stick.
Despite the sudden scoring surge, several things are troubling about the Jets’ power play:
• They’ve been awarded the ninth-fewest power-play opportunities.
• They’ve spent the least time in the league in the offensive zone.
• They’ve struggled on faceoffs and zone entries relative to the league.
• They’re winning fewer races to the end boards to recover pucks after missed shots.
In a league in which every three goals tends to correspond to roughly 1 standings point, the Jets’ drop-off in power-play efficiency alone could be blamed for their impending playoffs miss. Give Winnipeg 7 more points and we’re not playing the “what if they go 5-0-0?” game at all.
Give Toews credit for his net-front commitment. Appreciate his 59.2 power-play faceoff win rate, 20th best among players who have taken at least 100 power-play faceoffs. It’s hard to believe Arniel’s hunch has become a surefire fix.
“We got a little lucky,” Scheifele said. “But there’s other games where we’ve had a lot of good looks and haven’t gotten a goal. So, we just got rewarded for sticking with it.”
A little luck would help for five more games, too, whether you’re pulling for the draft pick or playoff hockey.
