The Winnipeg Jets are all in on Adam Lowry. They need to be all in on their window, too.

Lowry’s five year, $25 million contract extension is an exclamation mark — a loud, unavoidable reminder of a Winnipeg Jets fact. There will come a day when Winnipeg’s aging roster and lack of surefire top line, top pairing prospects catches up to the Jets.

They’re going to fall off the pace when Lowry, Connor Hellebuyck, Mark Scheifele, and their other key veterans on the wrong side of 30 age out of effectiveness. On that day, the Jets won’t be Stanley Cup contenders anymore. They may no longer be threats to make the playoffs. Kevin Cheveldayoff has been known to stun observers before, winning major trades, but there is an inevitability to the bottom dropping off.

The Jets’ prospect pool is ranked 25th, according to Corey Pronman. It was ranked 15th, according to Scott Wheeler — but that was before Chaz Lucius retired. There’s no next Hellebuyck, Scheifele, or Josh Morrissey in the team’s pipeline — no one quite ready to replace Winnipeg’s best players when the time comes. Meanwhile, the existing Jets are too good to draft inside the top 10, where most of the biggest difference makers get chosen. Dylan Samberg, Gabriel Vilardi, and Cole Perfetti will help mitigate Winnipeg’s losses, but there are more players aging out of effectiveness than there are entering their prime.

That doesn’t mean Lowry’s extension was the wrong move to make. It underscores the urgency with which the oldest team in the NHL must accomplish its goals during the limited window it has. Cheveldayoff and Scott Arniel may bristle at that term — “window” — but that’s exactly what they’ve built in Winnipeg: a three-to-five-year opportunity that depends on veteran players maintaining excellent form.

The moment Hellebuyck or Scheifele falter is the moment the Jets tumble down the standings.

Morrissey, the team’s top skater, is two years away from UFA status. He’s not a likely departure threat but he is well-positioned to (more than) double his salary. It seems likely that his current, $6.25 million contract combines with Hellebuyck and Scheifele’s peak form — plus Lowry’s ability to win his shutdown minutes — to give the Jets a three-year window to win it all.

So Lowry’s contract marks a moment in franchise history worth recognizing.

The Jets have been working on it since Kyle Connor’s $12 million AAV extension, itself made possible because Hellebuyck and Scheifele signed matching seven-year deals on Oct. 9, 2023. Winnipeg has won the most games (120) and earned the most points (250) in the NHL since those contracts were signed — coinciding perfectly with Lowry’s run as Jets captain. They signed UFA players like Jonathan Toews and Gustav Nyquist to try to mitigate the loss of Nikolaj Ehlers and will likely be buyers at the trade deadline because they’re in an era where there is immediacy to their opportunity to win.

That Winnipeg has a chance to win at all assumes Lowry is as good as I think he is — as opposed to what outside opinions might have to say.

Adam Lowry is a great defensive center, but $5M for a defense-only center’s age 33-37 seasons could get a little dicey. pic.twitter.com/vRH8QYUS6r

— dom 📈 (@domluszczyszyn) November 20, 2025

Critics are right to point at Lowry’s unforgiving style of play (and his hip surgery) and wonder about his ability to defy aging curves. There’s a reasonable concern that his physical, committed style of play leads to a more severe drop-off due to age than for other players. He’s averaged 183 hits and 43 blocks per season while playing against other teams’ top scorers throughout his career. He’s at his best when his hockey sense combines with brawn, with the latter being a fundamental part of Lowry’s success. When he stops winning battles, he won’t be effective anymore.

Let that ratchet up the urgency, though.

If Winnipeg’s window is about a group of veterans aging out of their prime while still delivering quality results, then we need to consider who those veterans are to the organization. Scheifele was the Jets’ first pick after moving north from Atlanta. He holds multiple franchise and city records, along with a unique role in Jets history: It was at the 2011 draft, just prior to Scheifele’s selection, wherein Mark Chipman called the new Winnipeg franchise the Jets for the first time in public. Lowry was the new Jets organization’s second draft pick and grew up to become its captain.

The Jets franchise will always be built upon that foundation. It could endure a hundred years, go through all of the ups and downs that come with that, and win multiple Stanley Cups. Scheifele will always be its first pick. Lowry will always be its first homegrown captain. Hellebuyck, who the Jets drafted in 2012, will always be a legendary scouting story.

Chipman, Cheveldayoff, and the rest of the decision makers in Winnipeg are people, first and foremost. Don’t you think their franchise origin story matters to them? Isn’t it obvious that they’re all-in on this core, whatever heights they reach or try and fail to reach with their current group? There may be long term pain associated with Winnipeg inevitable aging out of quality. In a worst-case scenario, where the Jets don’t go deep during their expiring window and must still rebuild, fans’ future pain may even be disproportionate to the heights they hit.

Aging curves might not matter to Jets leadership — at least, not nearly as much as honouring franchise history. Jets brass sold Hellebuyck and Scheifele on a plan to do everything in their power to win if they signed. It worked and then the majority of Winnipeg’s veterans re-signed, too. Lowry is the capstone on that group, even granting the Jets need to continue to add pieces if they’re meant to be a Cup contender this season. There’s no turning back now — Winnipeg’s key players are all-in on Winnipeg — and half-measures would be a disservice to the Jets’ bet on the next few seasons.

Finally, it’s a credit to Jets leadership that Winnipeg is in this position at all.

Great leadership has been a driving force behind the Jets’ recent success, from Chipman’s decision to put a charity opportunity in Lowry’s path through Rick Bowness’ tough, loving approach, to Lowry’s Game 7 heroics in the spring.

But Winnipeg is not a premier UFA destination. It makes frequent appearances on no-trade clauses in a league that gives out a ton of no trade clauses. It’s a testament to the way the Jets have looked after their players, whether it was flying Neal Pionk, Alex Iafallo, Dylan Samberg, and Dominic Toninato privately to Adam Johnson’s funeral, or the way True North helped Connor make a difference when his dad died of Parkinson’s. Management is fond of saying that players may not all want to come to Winnipeg but the ones who get to the city usually want to stay. This type of treatment has been a driving force behind player retention.

Lowry is part of the payoff. The fact that he turns 33 before his contract begins — on the oldest team in the NHL — drives home the urgency to that payoff. And he’s a part of the Jets’ first-ever homegrown, core group of players on an organization that values its history.

Of course, the Jets are all in on him.