The Winnipeg Jets have climbed within 4 points of a playoff spot, with the same number of games played as the Seattle Kraken and the Los Angeles Kings. They just wrapped up a 5-2-1 homestand, gaining ground on the second wild-card spot, while none of Seattle, Los Angeles or the San Jose Sharks is an obvious juggernaut.
Of course the Jets should be all in on their postseason push. In fact, it would be embarrassing not to be.
Unless the point is to win the Stanley Cup, you twit.
Oh geez, you again? Didn’t I put this whole argument to rest back in December by telling you the Jets had 61 percent playoff odds? And isn’t qualifying for the playoffs a literal prerequisite for winning the Stanley Cup?
It’s the literal prerequisite for getting destroyed by the Colorado Avalanche, twit.
It seems that annoying italics guy hasn’t mastered the “attack the argument, not the person” classiness demonstrated by the majority of our commenters. It also seems he knows one and only one insult, which is limiting.
Citing playoff odds from four months ago is limiting, you shortsighted Squidward. Winnipeg’s big homestand increased its odds of making the playoffs all of the way to … less than 20 percent! If I gave you 1-in-5 odds of me not slapping you, would you take them?
Pardon my exaggerated eye roll. If we’re going to do this, let’s actually do this. Make your best arguments, and I’ll do the same. The subscribers will be the judges. I’ll start.
Tanking is bad: Losing on purpose is ridiculous.
Let’s start by recognizing that hockey is a game played by people — competitive people — and not by draft guidebooks, spreadsheets or analytics. The concept of players “tanking” games is embarrassing and ridiculous. Mark Scheifele is the sort of person who’s more likely to flip a table being too competitive while playing Settlers of Catan than casually sit back and let someone else have a go at the Stanley Cup playoffs.
And you think other NHL athletes are wired differently? Morgan Barron didn’t drop to block Jimmy Snuggerud’s slot shot against the St. Louis Blues on Sunday only to come back, post two assists and set a career high in points (22) because he’s trying to boost Winnipeg’s odds in the draft lottery.
If you think anyone whose livelihood depends on NHL hockey is capable of phoning it in — especially now, just 4 points out of the playoffs — you don’t understand competitive sport.
Tanking is good: How else is Winnipeg supposed to acquire top-end talent?
You’re making an intellectually incomplete argument, you twit. Nobody needs Scheifele or Kyle Connor or Connor Hellebuyck to stop trying to ensure Winnipeg gets a good draft pick. Executives get paid a lot of money to make measured, unemotional assessments of their teams, and Kevin Cheveldayoff can’t afford to let his feelings get in the way.
So forget about Catan. Winnipeg plays the game of “talent acquisition in NHL” with both hands tied behind its back. Unrestricted free agency is harder for the Jets than any other NHL team — and is going to be tough for every NHL team this summer — while other teams’ executives give out no-trade clauses like that one guy at the Catan table builds roads.
My point is that Cheveldayoff’s long-term odds of winning a Stanley Cup are way higher if Winnipeg can acquire elite talent with a top-five pick in the draft than by trying to acquire that same level of talent via free agency or trade. Gabriel Vilardi was a great pull, but Winnipeg is fresh out of PLDs to peddle. Do you think Connor would have signed a max-term extension in Winnipeg if the Jets hadn’t drafted him and developed him for so many years first?
Tanking is dumb: You can’t control it, even if you try
Well, doesn’t that just prove my point? Tanking is stupid, because you can’t control what happens at the draft table. The New York Islanders had the 10th-best odds of winning last year’s lottery, for one, and turned that 3.5 percent shot into Matthew Schaefer.
And Connor is one of the best draft picks in Jets history because he’s one of Boston’s worst misses. The Bruins passed on Connor three times to choose Jakub Zboril, Jake DeBrusk and Zachary Senyshyn. If Winnipeg’s scouts are on their game, they can pull as much talent from a playoff team’s first-round pick as from something in the top 10.
Now you’re just abusing math. If the Jets are set to pick fifth and someone else wins a 3.5 percent lottery draw, they fall to … sixth! Their draft pick doesn’t just disappear. And Winnipeg has lottery odds of its own. Plus you know that taking players like Connor at No. 17 is the exception, not the rule. Twit.
Hey! This is my section.
Then make better points.
What I’m trying to say here is that, even in a world where Cheveldayoff uses his power to embrace the future, he can’t control it. Let’s say he goes all in on development, giving big minutes to Brad Lambert, Nikita Chibrikov, Brayden Yager, Danny Zhilkin or your prospect of choice (within the NHL’s post-deadline recall limits). Let’s say he implores Scott Arniel to sit pending UFA veterans such as Gustav Nyquist up front and Jacob Bryson on defence.
How much does that really improve Winnipeg’s odds of losing? This isn’t the NBA, none of those veterans are peak LeBron James, and all those roster moves do is embarrass veterans who are still within mathematical reach of the postseason.
Tanking is good: Remember that part about “feelings don’t matter”?
Gustav Nyquist is a good teammate and an engaging interview. That doesn’t mean he’s scored more than 12 goals in his past 125 NHL games. He’s a 36-year-old pending UFA, and his emotions shouldn’t matter more to the Jets than their odds of a high draft pick.
Now you’re the one who’s abusing math.
You twit! Who taught you to interject like this?
It’s my keyboard, isn’t it? If Nyquist is so bad he should sit, doesn’t playing a younger player ahead of him actually improve Winnipeg’s odds of winning?
Tanking is bad: Seattle, Los Angeles and San Jose don’t deserve WC2, either
I’m taking the microphone back. We can criticize the Jets’ middling record or warn they’re destined for the “mushy middle,” but I’m not sure there’s a compelling argument that the Sharks, Kings or Kraken are so wildly deserving of a playoff spot.
Macklin Celebrini is a phenom, but Celebrini has a 50-point lead on the Sharks’ second-leading scorer. San Jose’s time will come, but the Jets have better underlying numbers at five-on-five, a better goal differential and Hellebuyck in net. The Kings have the easiest schedule of the group, they traded for Artemi Panarin, and Anze Kopitar makes for a wonderful story, but Winnipeg has five more regulation wins and a better goal differential than Los Angeles.
And the Kraken, who currently hold the second wild-card spot? They have the worst record in their last 10 games of the entire group. Meanwhile, the Edmonton Oilers aren’t even a sure thing anymore despite their hold on a playoff spot in the Pacific. Their goaltending has been horrendous, and Leon Draisaitl is out for the regular season.
You’re saying all this stuff about feelings not mattering, but if a team can’t believe in its chances against a field playing so poorly, what’s the point of competitive sports at all?
Tanking is good: This whole competition is about who gets to get destroyed by Colorado
You remember that Winnipeg gained its most recent point by losing to the Nashville Predators in a shootout, right? That the Jets have cobbled together their late-season points by beating the 32nd-place Vancouver Canucks twice — and that they needed overtime to do it both times?
Winnipeg could scratch and claw into the playoffs and get all of two home games’ worth of revenue. Colorado is so much better and deeper than the Jets that Winnipeg’s odds of making it to Game 6 look a little like their odds of winning the draft lottery and picking No. 1.
The Avalanche have an even better record than Winnipeg did when the Jets won the Presidents’ Trophy last season. They’re a deeper, better team than the one that destroyed the Jets in five games in 2024, and the only team that seems capable of stopping them is the Dallas Stars, who are also better than the team that beat Winnipeg in Round 2 last spring.
Tanking is dumb: Didn’t Winnipeg just beat the Avalanche this weekend?
You’ve seen hockey, right? You know what can happen when a goaltender gets hot or a team gets a few good bounces? You saw the St. Louis Blues take Winnipeg to seven games in the first round last season?
This whole argument seems to come down to: “Is it worth it to try, even when odds are stacked against you?”
There’s a reason they play the games. Miracles happen. Teams get hot. If we can’t believe in that in a hockey game, what’s the point of any of this?
How charmingly nihilistic of you. Getting smoked by Colorado doesn’t get you Keaton Verhoeff or any of these prospects. Don’t make me call you a twit again.
What say you, Jets fans?