Today we’re finding Winnipeg its second-line centre.

We’re also projecting timelines for its top prospects, from Elias Salomonsson, Brad Lambert and Nikita Chibrikov through Brayden Yager, Colby Barlow and beyond. Then we’re taking our first steps toward rewriting the CBA and exploring trade possibilities, UFA signings, and even an offer sheet or two — and we will do all of it based on your questions for our latest mailbag.

Thanks, as always, everyone — it’s been a great start to the offseason.

Note: Submitted questions have been edited for clarity and length.

How can the Jets address their recurring need for a second-line centre? — Travis R.

There are four ways, as I see them.

The first is to take a different approach, forgive Gabriel Vilardi and Cole Perfetti their lack of footspeed, and attempt to use them in the role. Coach Scott Arniel prefers faster centres who can offer low support in the defensive zone and help lead transition attacks. Perfetti and Vilardi have the hockey sense to do so, but Arniel hasn’t typically been satisfied with their skating.

The second is to approach the unrestricted free agent market, where the most realistic acquisition is one of the NHL’s all-time great players, but he hasn’t played since April 13, 2023. Jonathan Toews, 37, was not an elite centre for Chicago in either of his last two seasons, but he is someone with whom Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff maintains a relationship. Winnipeg is interested and likely willing to bet on Toews’ return to good health, mitigating continued age-related decline. (If the Jets do manage to sign Toews, it may be safer to think of him as a bottom-six centre until his return to form — if there is one — proves otherwise.)

The UFA market also includes Sam Bennett, John Tavares, Matt Duchene, Ryan Donato and Pius Suter — who all strike me as various shades of unlikely to sign in Winnipeg. If I’m right, the idea of Toews gains appeal — not because I view him as a sure thing but because throwing a dart at his middle-six capability offers some odds of helping Winnipeg. This stands in stark contrast to signing someone like Bennett: a zero percent shot at signing him equates to zero help, regardless of his current effectiveness as a player. (The zero percent number is my belief, not sourced information.)

The third approach is the restricted free agent market, which provides younger players but requires Winnipeg to commit assets to a trade or an offer sheet.

Let’s take a quick look, using information from PuckPedia:

PlayerAgeTeamGPPoints

23

MIN

82

60

26

BOS

77

57

25

BUF

79

53

22

ANA

76

52

26

CGY

81

37

25

UTA

82

27

23

CGY

54

27

26

NJD

65

22

Let’s start by using Marco Rossi as an example. Michael Russo and Joe Smith have reported that the Wild are not interested in signing the 23-year-old centre to a deal in the $7 million range and are thus exploring the idea of a trade. The appeal of acquiring such a player is clear: Rossi is already a 60-point centre, he turns 24 this September and he’s not UFA-eligible until 2029. If he helps, he helps through the heart of Winnipeg’s current window. A trade for such a player could cost a first-round pick and a top prospect — or more, depending on the market.

What about offer sheets?

If you’re unfamiliar with the process, an offer sheet is a way for teams to acquire RFAs from rival clubs. Winnipeg could theoretically sign Rossi to a contract, which Minnesota would then have the option of matching. If the Wild matched the Jets’ contract offer, then Minnesota would keep Rossi without any cost to the Jets. If they declined to match that offer, Rossi would join Winnipeg and the Jets would send Minnesota draft picks. The number of picks would depend on the price of the contract:

Offer sheet AAVCompensation

$11,700,193 and up

Four first-round picks

$9,360,154 to $11,700,192

Two first-round picks, one second-round pick, one third-round pick

$7,020,114 to $9,360,153

One first-round pick, one second-round pick, one third-round pick

$4,680,077 to $7,020,113

One first-round pick, one third-round pick

$2,340,038 to $4,680,076

One second-round pick

$1,544,425 to $2,340,037

One third-round pick

$1,544,424 and below

No compensation

Some of the offer sheet tiers are shown in red because Winnipeg doesn’t have its second-round pick in either of the next two drafts and thus can’t make an offer sheet in that range.

Let’s consider two examples. First, imagine that Winnipeg signed Rossi to a five-year, $35 million contract with a $7.0 million average annual value. That would only cost the Jets a first-round pick and a third-round pick, which carries tremendous appeal. If the Wild believe in Rossi at all, though, they’d likely be willing to match that offer sheet and look for a better trade at a later time.

A second example would target a player in that same compensation range who would be harder to match for his current club. Maybe they don’t have enough cap space — or maybe, unlike our Rossi example, the Jets’ offer is rich relative to the player.

Let’s say Winnipeg approaches Morgan Geekie with that same five-year, $35 million contract offer. Let’s say Geekie loves the idea of living in Winnipeg, just under a three-hour drive down the Yellowhead Highway from his hometown of Strathclair, MB. And let’s say the Boston Bruins look at Geekie’s 33-goal breakout season, gamble on his 22 percent shooting percentage being unsustainable and let him go. It’s not quite realistic, in that Boston has a ton of cap space, but $7 million AAV is further outside a reasonable contract projection for Geekie than it was for Rossi.

There are challenges in this approach. Offer sheets get discussed more than they get executed because it’s tough to find the perfect mix of a player willing to be poached, a rival club unable or unwilling to hold onto him, and a team willing to run the risk of retribution somewhere down the line. There’s thought in some circles that teams will be more likely to go this route, given the St. Louis Blues’ successful acquisition of Dylan Holloway and Phillip Broberg from Edmonton last summer, but the Oilers were more cap-strapped than any of the clubs I’ve listed above. Maybe it’s less about an offer sheet, then, and more about acquiring one of these RFA targets by trade.

As a final and very different thought: If we’re talking about offer sheets at all, what about 23-year-old power forward Will Cuylle, who scored 20 goals and 25 assists for the New York Rangers last season? Cuylle can play either wing and has the ability and intensity to drag teammates into the fight.

How big of an addition would Dmitri Rashevsky be for the Jets if they convince him to come overseas? — Brad B.

According to a report from Sport Express, Rashevsky has signed a three-year offer sheet with Avangard Omsk, with Dynamo Moscow now given the opportunity to match. Either way, it looks more like he’ll play the next three years in Russia than come to North America. But let’s run the analysis anyway.

Rashevsky is a 24-year-old prospect whose elite stickhandling leads to highlight-reel offence in the KHL. He’s scored 62 goals and 59 assists in his last 199 KHL games for Dynamo and stunned a lot of observers — myself included — when he scored 19 goals in 48 games right after the Jets drafted him as an overager in 2021.

I don’t think the Jets are going to be successful in bringing him to North America this season, but it’s still a fun question to explore because the range of possibilities seems to be enormous.

The data-informed approach would be to take a look at every player who moved between the KHL and NHL in recent seasons, check out how their scoring rates changed and build an estimate for Rashevsky. Thankfully, this study of NHL equivalencies (NHLe) is commonplace, with one recent study estimating Rashevsky’s KHL offence would translate to approximately 50 points per 82 NHL games.

First up, new NHLe values! 7.0 brings new NHLe values for every league in every year, calculated in a new way (more on the specifics in my 7.0 writeup coming soon).

Here are the 20 best leagues in the 2024-2025 season based on NHLe and their change over the past 5 years! https://t.co/mbWjXb5pxx pic.twitter.com/7pdAkYyiyH

— Nick (@nickiacoban) June 8, 2025

If Rashevsky pulled off a 50-point NHL season, it would tie him with Perfetti for sixth among Jets skaters. That’s a touch ambitious. There have been a lot of players to move between the NHL and KHL (and back) in recent history. When I look at the scoring of NHL castaways like Josh Leivo, Ryan Spooner and Jordan Weal (Rashevsky’s teammate in Moscow), one gets the sense of overinflated offensive totals.

Take Leivo, who I remember best as a Maple Leaf but whose NHL work included 16 points in 51 games for the 2022-23 St. Louis Blues. He’s 32 years old now and just scored 80 points in 62 games for the Chernyshev Division-winning Salavat Yulaev in Ufa. Spooner, who I remember best as a Boston Bruin and who scored at a point per game in the AHL at his peak, is 33 years old and has scored at a rate of 0.80 points per game through his last three KHL seasons, while Weal — who was also a roughly point-per-game AHL scorer — has scored 0.88 points per game in the KHL in that same time frame.

It’s the sort of stuff that should bring our expectations for Rashevsky crashing down to earth.

But then you take a look in the other direction. Kirill Marchenko was a star for Columbus this season, scoring 31 goals and 74 points in the NHL at 24. Rewind to his last KHL season — the 21-year-old Marchenko scored fewer points per game than Rashevsky did that year — and it’s easy to understand why Winnipeg wants Rashevsky to sign as soon as possible.

It feels like the Jets have a glut of youth ready to arrive within a year or two of each other. Parker Ford, Nikita Chibrikov, Brad Lambert, Dmitri Rashevsky, Elias Salomonsson, Colby Barlow and Brayden Yager. What do their arrival schedules look like? — Ryan F.

This is a great question. There could be an opportunity available as early as this season.

If UFA forwards Nikolaj Ehlers, Mason Appleton and Brandon Tanev sign elsewhere, then the current Jets roster has room for three additional forwards — four if you assume Adam Lowry starts the season on the injured reserve. Even if two of those players are veterans, there’s room for Lambert and Chibrikov to start the season with Winnipeg if they earn it at camp.

Ford turns 25 this summer, so I’m not thinking of him as a prospect in the same light, but he does make sense as a depth forward on Winnipeg’s current roster. He’s a small player with a ton of competitive fire — a spark plug in a way Winnipeg could use. (That said, Ford hasn’t been an elite scorer at any level. His career arc implies more of an NHL/AHL tweener than a middle-six impact player. He could “make” the Jets a whole bunch of times in between AHL stints over the course of his next contract.)

I’m projecting Yager and Barlow to start their pro careers in the AHL this season, while Salomonsson could be anything from a viable third-pairing defenceman if the Jets clear room ahead of him to a 2025-26 Manitoba Moose who has to bide his time for parts of two AHL seasons as Dylan Samberg did before him. Salomonsson is younger than Samberg was and likely a step ahead in terms of his eventual ceiling, but this may not earn him an early arrival.

We’ll deep-dive this later in the summer.

Do you think the league would ever consider getting rid of modified no movement clauses? — Trevor G.

No. The NHL and NHLPA appear to be on track to negotiate their next CBA smoothly and without massive changes.

But I couldn’t help but poke around a little bit. The number of no-trade clauses is unique to the NHL, and so too is the proportion of them likely to include the Jets.

I was shocked to read that the NBA only has two no-trade clauses: LeBron James and … Bradley Beal. The NFL has eight, all of them star quarterbacks. The MLB automatically grants “10-and-5” trade-vetoing rights to players who achieve 10 years in the league, along with five consecutive years with the same club. I was told by an MLB writer that the number of players with 10-and-5 rights (or independently negotiated no-trade clauses) is “relatively small.”

According to PuckPedia, the NHL has 80 players with full NMCs and another 164 players with at least some amount of no-trade protection. Remember that 49 percent of polled NHL players report that Winnipeg would be the first team on their no-trade clause; add them to the 80 NMCs and you get at least 160 players — 21.7 percent of the league — likely to have a “no thank you” to Winnipeg built into their contracts.

Winnipeg built a Presidents’ Trophy team with Eric Comrie and Colin Miller as their marquee UFA signings and one-fifth of the NHL — or more — listing it in their NTC. Take a moment to applaud that fact and another one to rage against the machine. The Jets are flying against the wind both ways, even compared to other Canadian teams.

What prospect in the upcoming draft excites you the most for the Jets (and why is it Blake Fiddler?) — Adam B.

It’s draft season! Great question. I consulted an array of scouts in making the Jets’ pick in our next mock draft, which will be published on Wednesday.

Fiddler is an intriguing prospect — read Scott Wheeler’s feature story for more — but you’ll have to stay tuned for proper draft content on my end. In the meantime, check out Wheeler’s rankings here and Corey Pronman’s rankings here.

(Top photo of Marco Rossi: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)