There is a concerning element to the Winnipeg Jets\u2019 playoff push and it has nothing to do with the draft lottery.<\/p>\n
No, this isn\u2019t about Gavin McKenna or Keaton Verhoeff or your prospect of choice. It\u2019s not about the Colorado Avalanche, who dominated Winnipeg two years ago and will start Round 1 as overwhelming favourites against any opponent. GM Kevin Cheveldayoff and the rest of the Jets front office need to face hard questions this offseason.<\/p>\n
The problem with the Jets players\u2019 well-earned push up the NHL standings is that it gives Jets management the opportunity to fool itself. A review of past end-of-season interviews with Cheveldayoff \u2014 and the Jets\u2019 subsequent signings, trades, and deployment \u2014 indicates a team that\u2019s not always as self-critical as the circumstances have called for. Whether or not the Jets continue their late-season surge, the most important outcome from this season will be the lessons they learn from it.<\/p>\n
When the Jets get it right, they hire Rick Bowness and turn a divided group into a defensive juggernaut. When they fail, they sign veterans who are too slow to play Bowness\u2019 brand of hockey or carry out Scott Arniel\u2019s \u201cforecheck, backcheck, defend the guts of the ice\u201d philosophy.<\/p>\n
Last summer, Jonathan Toews, Tanner Pearson and Luke Schenn were lauded for their Stanley Cup-winning acumen as Arniel joked there was no way Toews would play on the team\u2019s fourth line. The Jets proceeded to play Toews like a second-line centre as his minuses piled up, then found that team performance magically improved once Pearson, Schenn, and Logan Stanley were moved at the deadline.<\/p>\n
The team\u2019s belief seemed to be that it was a Cup contender that only needed playoff experience and a bit of toughness to take the next step. But Cheveldayoff\u2019s acquisitions and Arniel\u2019s deployment didn\u2019t have the quality or pace to play \u201cWinnipeg Jets\u201d hockey.<\/p>\n
The team Cheveldayoff has built is a wild-card team based on roster quality with no clear route out of the mushy middle. Any swings taken towards a true second-line centre, an upgrade on defence or revamping Winnipeg\u2019s bottom-six forward group must be more effective than Cheveldayoff has been since a torrid streak of transactions that began with the Andrew Copp trade in 2022.<\/p>\n
More recently, Winnipeg has sent a first-round pick, two second-round picks, a third-round pick and two fourth-round picks away for Sean Monahan, Tyler Toffoli, Brandon Tanev, Schenn and Colin Miller. Only Miller remains (albeit in a depth role). Winnipeg\u2019s .615 points percentage since Cheveldayoff shipped Schenn (and Stanley) to the Buffalo Sabres can\u2019t solely be attributed to that one transaction, but the dynamism and pace on its third pair since Schenn\u2019s departure has been a revelation by comparison. Isak Rosen is a good prospect but Jacob Bryson has been outscored 12-5. A lot of factors go into goal rates, but the small sample result is a downgrade on Schenn\u2019s 29-16 disadvantage in 46 games prior to being traded.<\/p>\n
This is a long way of saying that the Jets\u2019 poor run of transactions in recent years may be responsible for part of their misery. Their most recent trade may be a step in the right direction, but it is not enough to ease concerns regarding its capacity for self-criticism.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone seems to forget the role that Logan Stanley played in winning four straight against Edmonton (in 2021),\u201d Cheveldayoff told me in January 2025. \u201cHe was a regular shift player, he played all the (playoff) games. We go into Montreal, he\u2019s the one that scores the two goals in Montreal. So he\u2019s on a pretty good trajectory as a developing player at that point in time.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is some missing context with respect to this quote. The discussion was rooted in Cheveldayoff\u2019s decision to protect Stanley at the 2021 expansion draft. I\u2019d asked about that and followed it with a reference to two Jets defencemen lost to Stanley\u2019s development: Johnathan Kovacevic and Declan Chisholm.<\/p>\n
The part he missed was that the Jets\u2019 evaluation of their own players had omitted the impact of variance, while ignoring the lengths their own coaches went to in order to hide Stanley from top-end talent that season. Stanley averaged the sixth-most minutes among Jets defencemen during the 2021 playoffs, playing nearly five fewer minutes per game than Winnipeg\u2019s No. 5 defenceman. The coaching staff kept Stanley as far from opponents\u2019 star players as possible, mirroring his extremely sheltered deployment from the regular season, and the Jets were still outshot (slightly) and outchanced (heavily) during Stanley\u2019s minutes.<\/p>\n
The team was fooled by percentages \u2014 Connor Hellebuyck\u2019s incredible performance, combined with an unsustainably high shooting percentage \u2014 and decided it had a budding top-four defenceman on its hands. Why should the management team whose assessment missed PDO (and who traded two draft picks for Schenn after the quoted conversation) be trusted to re-route this year\u2019s Jets?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a good time to remember Winnipeg has made excellent offseason moves, too. Cheveldayoff\u2019s acquisition of Gabriel Vilardi, Alex Iafallo, Rasmus Kupari and the draft pick which became Alfons Freij was first-class work, turning an untenable situation into a clear win. Extending Vilardi, along with franchise cornerstones Hellebuyck, Mark Scheifele and Kyle Connor, was critical towards building a playoff-contending team. Cheveldayoff has also retained Dylan DeMelo, Nino Niederreiter and Vladislav Namestnikov after acquiring each for discount prices, back when they were younger and more effective than the versions Winnipeg got this season. In all three cases, those players delivered positive value because they filled roles the Jets legitimately needed to fill.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t a Logan Stanley hit piece. He\u2019s a beloved ex-teammate who eventually found his way to third-pairing quality. It\u2019s not an indictment of Toews, whose performance is often of solid bottom-six quality, and whose lack of cheat was evident during some of Winnipeg\u2019s worst games of the season.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an indictment of Winnipeg\u2019s ability to be fooled by its own success. It\u2019s difficult to head towards the 2026 offseason believing in the group that sold Toews as a second-line centre and the GM who said, \u201cThere is some offensive help there to replace (Nikolaj Ehlers)\u201d with respect to Pearson and Gustav Nyquist.<\/p>\n
The Jets roster needs help whether it makes the playoffs or not. The problem with the Jets\u2019 process is that they deemed Stanley\u2019s 13 minutes of five-on-five hockey per game and two goals against Carey Price in 2021 as indicative of a blossoming top-four defenceman. It predetermined Elias Salomonsson\u2019s AHL status<\/a> this season, despite performance which has been markedly better than Schenn\u2019s.<\/p>\n It\u2019s clear Winnipeg has an imperfect sense of when a prospect is or isn\u2019t ready to make an NHL impact. Betting on veterans makes sense for a win-now, all-in team with no room in its decision-making matrix for a young player whose total impact may be superior to a veteran but whose shift-by-shift performance may fluctuate. Cheveldayoff has perhaps the most difficult GM job in hockey, given no-trade clauses and the unrestricted free agent market\u2019s lack of fondness for Winnipeg. But the idea that you can prescribe a player to a league prior to the season, like Salomonsson \u2014 as Arniel indicated last week \u2014 is costing Winnipeg the opportunity for long-term wins.<\/p>\n There are good examples of prospects \u201cover-ripening\u201d in other leagues. The Detroit Red Wings were famous for this, slow-playing the rise of Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk as two of the best players in the NHL. Still, Winnipeg\u2019s focus on the immediate moment has cost the team enough opportunities at NHL players for a long enough time period to be detrimental. (Remember the time Ville Heinola went over a month<\/a> without playing a competitive hockey game in the NHL or AHL despite good health \u2014 twice?)<\/p>\n Let\u2019s end by taking a breath. Winnipeg won the 2025 Presidents\u2019 Trophy as the NHL\u2019s top regular-season team. It gave up the fewest goals in the league for two straight seasons prior to this one. Even when you include this season\u2019s middling (and potentially still miserable) outcome, the Jets have won the fourth-most games over the past three seasons. It is a truly impressive run of accomplishments following Winnipeg\u2019s last playoff miss in 2021-22, when Paul Maurice stepped down, Dave Lowry replaced him, and Bowness was hired in the offseason.<\/p>\n