1. At some point, probably in the very near future, perhaps before you are done reading this newsletter today, the Winnipeg Jets are going to fire head coach Scott Arniel.
That is the nature of the beast in a league where head coaches have the shelf life of milk, and especially when it is a situation like the one the Jets are currently facing.
What, exactly, is that situation?
It is Arniel’s third-year on the job, which starts to become a make-or-break year for most head coaches.
The team missed the playoffs a year ago under his watch, just after winning the Presidents’ Trophy as the NHL’s best regular season team the previous season.
The team is 4-8-3 through its first 15 games, and on Sunday played one of the least competitive games of the NHL season when they were systematically dominated by the Carolina Hurricanes, 7-0. It was not just a 7-0 blowout, Winnipeg looked completely overmatched from the opening puck drop.
That game is their ninth loss in a row, and the fourth consecutive game where it has allowed at least five goals.
The problem with firing Arniel is not necessarily that he is undeserving or that he is a great coach they will regret letting get away. I am not sure he is either of those things.
The problem is that in most cases (probably eight or nine out of 10), if your team is in a position where it feels it needs to fire its head coach, you should probably also be looking at making a change in the general manager office.
That is not to say that some teams don’t just need a coaching change and a new voice to lead them.
Sometimes it happens. Sometimes it is the missing piece. But in most cases, the problem runs a lot deeper than that.
Especially in a case like this where the general manager (Kevin Cheveldayoff) has been on the job for 16 years and already made four different head-coaching hires (five if you count the brief interim run of Dave Lowry).
When he inevitably fires Arniel, that will be his third fired head coach since the start of the 2021-22 season.
That is not that long ago.
At what point do you stop blaming the revolving door of head coaches, and start pointing the finger at the guy that has assembled the obviously flawed, and potentially (likely?) bad roster?
How many more kicks at the can does he get?
The thing that should be so eye-opening to Winnipeg ownership is that they are finally getting a chance to see what this roster looks like without the safety net of a Hall of Fame goalie (Connor Hellebuyck) that steals games and masks the team’s flaws every night.
The Hellebuyck era Jets are right there with the Henrik Lundqvist/Igor Shesterkin New York Rangers, and the Carey Price era Montreal Canadiens, as the prime examples as to how having an elite goalie can actually be a curse. They mask your flaws. They win you a lot of games you probably would not otherwise win. They turn your average team into a contender. But because you are winning games, and making the playoffs, you lose sight of the very real issues that might be lurking beneath that surface and lowering your team’s ceiling and holding you back. It puts too much pressure on the goalies, and there is only so far that goalie, no matter how great they are, can take you without a strong supporting cast around them.
The Jets got a glimpse of it a year ago when Hellebuyck had his worst full season as a starter and also missed some time due to injury.
They are getting a very real taste of it this season. Especially now that he has actually been traded away from the team, going to the New Jersey Devils.
It is not even like they are getting truly awful goaltending this season. It has not been good by any means, but it is far from the biggest problem on the roster. They are simply getting outplayed to an outrageous level. Their 5-on-5 expected goal share via MoneyPuck is 26th in the NHL. It was 25th a year ago. They were 20th in expected goals against per 60 minutes a year ago, and are 19th this season.
Not having Josh Morrissey, their best defenseman, for most of the season to this point has not helped, but he played in 77 games a year ago and it didn’t make a difference.
It is simply a bad team, whose best players are all on the other side of 30, and it no longer has a game-changing goalie to cover up all of the flaws that management continues to either ignore, or has no idea on how to fix.
Scott Arniel will take the fall for it. The problems will still exist. Such is life in the NHL.
Now let’s talk about the NHL’s Department of Player Safety, Nikita Kucherov’s trade request from the Tampa Bay Lightning and some links from the past week.