The Winnipeg Jets had high hopes for a strong season in the North Division. After a respectable regular season, they entered the playoffs against the Oilers as the third seed in the North. Following a sweep of the Oilers in the first round, the Jets were swept themselves in the second round by the Montreal Canadiens. Are the Jets really a contending team? Let’s take a deeper look into their season to look for an answer. If you haven’t already, I recommend giving this post a read for some additional detail on the plots we’ll look at.
Overall Performance (Regular Season)
The Jets put in a respectable performance in the regular season, hanging with the Leafs and Oilers near the top of the division standings for much of the year. They stumbled down the stretch, ending up as the third seed. Let’s take a look at our points predictor model, which uses 5v5 data, to see if the stumble down the stretch was a just a rough patch or a sign of something more.
The Jets underperformed the model slightly and the model actually puts them in a dead heat for second with the Calgary Flames based on their 5v5 results. This finding is less encouraging looking at how far back of the Leafs the Jets were, with the model results essentially matching the actual standings.
Let’s take a look at the Jets’ 5v5 goal rates that feed the model.
While the Jets are often thought of as an offensive team that lacks defense, their 5v5 goal rates actually suggest they are relatively balanced. Both their goals for and goals against rates at 5v5 were good this season, but not elite.
Player Performance (Regular Season)
We’ll look at a 5v5 player usage chart to start delving into individual player performance. Defensemen’s stats have been factored for comparison with forwards on this first chart, and we get a visual depth chart as a result. We should see players distributed along the diagonal with the Jets’ best players at the top right.
We get the roughly diagonal distribution we were looking for here. The Jets’ star forwards lead the team, with Mark Scheifele, Nic Ehlers, and Kyle Connor at the top of the chart. One player who stands out is Josh Morrissey. Often deployed on the top pairing, he is utilized as one of the Jets’ best defensemen. However, we see him above the diagonal, indicating he may have been overutilized based on his point production. Tucker Poolman also appears to have been overutilized. While Jordie Benn is well under the diagonal, we won’t put too much stock in it since his numbers are more reflective of his time in Vancouver this season.
Let’s take a look at individual offensive impact by plotting on-ice GF/60 vs TOI/60. This gives a visual for which players had larger contributions to team GF/60, with players further to the top right having greater impacts.
There aren’t many surprises here. The Jets’ top players generally had the largest offensive impacts. While Logan Stanley and Jordie Benn jump out with high on-ice GF/60, we also see they benefitted from very high on-ice SH% which is likely to regress in the long term.
We get a similar visual for individual defensive contributions by plotting on-ice SA/60 vs TOI/GP. This time, players further left and down had better contributions to team GA/60.
Neil Pionk and Derek Forbort appear at the far left of the chart, showing us these two defensemen had the best defensive impact for the Jets. Josh Morrissey is much further right, adding fuel to our earlier suspicion that he was overutilized. Many of the Jets forwards are clusters just below the league average of 30 SA/60 (for players with >200min at 5v5). However, a few of the Jets’ star forwards had significantly worse defensive impacts, including Scheifele and Wheeler.
Next, we’ll use our on-ice GF/60 models to gain some insight into which players carried their linemates. The variance between the model output and actual is of interest for this, with variances greater than about 0.3 worth noting. Negative variances indicate a player carried his linemates.
Among the Jets forwards, Scheifele, Adam Lowry and Trevor Lewis stand out as players who appear to have carried their linemates offensively. We need to be a bit cautious with Scheifele and Lowry as their shooting percentages are on the high side, which could be inflating the model results somewhat. Nate Thompson is the only forward who hit our threshold indicating he may have been carried by his linemates. Possibly more interesting is the overall trend among forwards, with nearly all positive variances, particularly higher in the lineup. This suggests that the forwards carried the Jets’ offense.
Looking at the model results for defensemen, the theory that the Jets offense was powered by their forwards gains more evidence. There isn’t a single Jets defenseman who appears to have carried his line mates offensively. Instead, we see some very large variances suggesting that the Jets D were generally just along for the ride.
The Jets goaltending was strong through the season, with Connor Hellebuyck putting up a wall again this season. Laurent Brossiot was also strong as the backup, providing quality goaltending when Hellebuyck was given a night off. Their combined strong play is certainly a large reason behind the Jets’ reasonably good goals against rate.
Playoff Performance
The Jets joined an exclusive club with exactly eight playoff games played in one season. With 3 of 4 games against the Oilers going to overtime, the Jets got the bounces and swept the Oilers in the first round. However, the tables turned against the Habs in round 2 and the Jets were swept out of the picture. While 8 games doesn’t give us a large enough sample to make long term predictions, it can give us some insight into what happened.
We see from the 5v5 playoff usage chart that the Jets top forwards didn’t produce at the same level as in the regular season. While Hellebuyck was able shut the door against the Oilers, it wasn’t enough to hold off he Canadiens without more offensive support.Â
Looking Ahead
The Jets have over $66M committed to next seasons cap entering the offseason. With a handful of free agents leaving holes in their roster, they certainly have enough cap space to improve.
Key RFAs:
Neil Pionk is an RFA this offseason and the Jets should look to lock him up. His strong defensive play was evident in our review and he did a masterful job of shutting down the Oilers big guns in round one of the playoffs. Andrew Copp and Logan Stanley are also RFAs that Winnipeg will look at this summer.
Key UFAs:
Paul Stastny and Mathieu Perrault are the most notable UFAs on the Jets’ roster. Stastny provided strong two way play and some offensive depth for the Jets and will be missed if he is not re-signed. There are also some openings on the back end with Derek Forbort, Jordie Benn and Tucker Poolman all headed for free agency. In goal, Laurent Brossiot will also hit the open market.
Key Players Under Contract:
Connor Hellebuyck is a big reason for the Jets continued success. As long as he continues his Vezina calibre play, the Jets will be well positioned to be a playoff team. The Jets star forwards will continue to drive their offense, with Scheifele, Ehlers and Connor leading the way.
Tough Questions:
Is Josh Morrissey a top pairing defenseman? With a $6.25M cap hit and 7 years remaining on his deal, the Jets need more from him than we saw in our review. If he can’t hold down a spot on the top pair, should the Jets look for a trade partner?
Offseason Priorities:
We saw the Jets offense was carried by their forwards. With a few free agents in the defense corps, the Jets have an opportunity to make some upgrades there. They should target a number one defenseman that can contribute offensively, as well as another top four D. They’ll also need to fill the hole left by Stastny if they don’t resign him.
Check out my other season reviews that have been posted, such as the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Edmonton Oilers, and subscribe to catch the rest of my season reviews as they come out.
data: Natural Stat Trick
cap data: CapFriendly
