The Winnipeg Jets had an incredibly disappointing season, crashing out of the playoff picture following their President’s Trophy winning season just a year prior. Which was closer to the true talent Winnipeg Jets? In the Central Division Notebook in March, I suggested it was time for the Jets front office to ask some tough questions. With an aging roster, they’re in need of a major overhaul.
You may be wondering why one bad showing puts the Jets back to the beginning of the roster building timeline. Sure, they could very well be better than this year if they continue to lean into this core and add or modify around the edges this summer. With the age of their core, though, that looks like a recipe to find and stay in the mushy middle.
The Jets roster as currently constructed has a veteran cohort and a prime cohort. There’s very little for young players and the Jets seem reticent to give their prospects a shot in the NHL. That picture needs to change or the Jets will be fighting the decline of a team wide age curve. 2022 draftees Brad Lambert and Elias Salomonsson saw some NHL action down the stretch. The Jets need them to be impactful going forward and they need others to join them.
The trouble is the Jets have been trying to contend in recent years and have move a few draft picks and prospects such that their overall prospect pipeline is a little below baseline. It’s not a great recipe for a team that has difficulty attracting free agents. The Jets should be experts at drafting and developing homegrown talent if they expect to content but it’s not showing at this point in time.
We’ve established that the Jets need a youth movement. So how do they create a cohort with enough player and enough skill to reasonably expect to be a contender at some point down the road? Free agency isn’t a reliable option for them, so they have to hit the trade market.
Could they keep the Scheifele/Connor/Morrissey/Hellebuyuck core together and retool? Possibly. But it will mean players like Cole Perfetti and Gabe Vilardi are their best trade chips. Perfetti and Vilardi are in their prime and should be consistent pieces of the roster for a number of years. Might exacerbate the issue with the team age curve, depending on the return. If they move some of the other supporting cast instead, the returns won’t be as strong. One way or another, this seems like a recipe to find the mushy middle.
If a retool isn’t a viable option, then a deeper effort to restock the prospect pipeline is required. Accepting the fact that this core has run out of time would allow the Jets to make Scheifele and Hellebuyuck available. There are no movement clauses to navigate, but moving the stars that are already in their 30s could be the route to get maximum trade returns without gutting the current prime cohort. With the core locked in for the long haul, the alternative is watching them decline as a group, eroding the potential trade value on the roster until it’s no longer possible to sell the idea that this group just needs a couple of tweaks around the edges.
