An Autopsy of the Winnipeg Jets: Cole Perfetti, Vlad Namestnikov, and Alex Iafallo
A series of postmortem analyses of the 2023-24 Winnipeg Jets
Pre-Blog Note: Normally we follow a Monday and Friday free post and Wednesday paid-tier post. However, with the summer scheduling, it will be a bit more varied and less set which days will be for which articles.
We continue our series on the 2023-24 Winnipeg Jets, analyzing individual players, their performance, and their potential to contribute to a future championship team. Today, we focus on what probably should have been the Jets’ fourth line in the playoffs.
Kyle Connor was injured part way through the season. At that point, Nikolaj Ehlers was moved from the third line with Vlad Namestnikov and Cole Perfetti to the top line. This eventually led to Head Coach Rick Bowness putting Alex Iafallo with the other two.
During that period, they spent one game as the top-deployed line at 5v5, six games as the second line, and seven games as the third line.
And the trio performed pretty well:
It wasn’t just them. The team performed very well also over this time frame, which many would remember as the Jets dominating teams and going on a huge streak, nearly setting league records for consecutive goals against.
But for some reason, despite being one of the best lines the team has seen, the Jets chose to handicap themselves in the playoffs. Rather than play a line that was very, very good, they chose to play a line that more fit the perceived normative fourth-line makeup.
Cole Perfetti
When evaluating players, I like to look at both HockeyViz’s sG model as well as a weighted average of Evolving Hockey’s GAR and xGAR models. In general, I lean towards sG being slightly superior. This is especially true at the beginning of the season, as I prefer sG using the previous season as a prior rather than using league average as a season prior.
That said, both are imperfect —as are all things in life— and can have issues with false attribution.
I find the disparity between the two models on Perfetti’s 2023-24 performance quite interesting.
They both view Perfetti in a similar vein for defense. Both suggest that Perfetti had a slightly positive influence on reducing the Jets’ chances against when accounting for who Perfetti played with and against.
They both differ quite substantially on the offensive side of things. They both viewed Perfetti quite similarly the previous two years, but sG had Perfetti taking a step back offensively while wGAR has the opposite.
When looking at the performance metrics on Perfetti with his primary linemates, I’m not even certain that I can figure out the false attributions (example: it’s quite apparent that some of Pionk’s offensive value was likely falsely attributed to Brenden Dillon and the opposite for Dillon’s defensive value).
Perfetti wasn’t trusted to protect a lead in high leverage minutes by Bowness, but he was trusted more so than most of the forwards the Jets rotated on the fourth line. However, Bowness did use Perfetti when the Jets were trailing, more so than any forward on the fourth or Lowry lines, even Namestnikov or Iafallo.
I’m interested to see how Scott Arniel will redeploy things as we could see significant changes with Perfetti’s usage given that plus the Jets currently not dipping significantly in the free agency or trade markets for forwards.
I think people, including coaches, can undervalue how much ice time and deployment impacts perceived performance.
Perfetti was one of the top-performing forwards on one of the top-performing lines on one of the top-performing teams until Kyle Connor became healthy and Kevin Cheveldayoff added Sean Monahan. After that, his ice time began to dramatically tank, leading to fewer point totals or opportunities to create memorable moments. This ultimately led to him not meeting the expectations they had for him, leading to multiple stints in the press box.
As an RFA, Evolving-Hockey projects Cole Perfetti’s most likely contract this summer to be a two-year bridge around $3 million AAV. That said, there’s still about a two-thirds chance of it being otherwise, and the most likely long-term contract being a 15% chance of 7x $5M.
Vlad Namestnikov
Namestnikov had himself another good season on the Jets. Whether by sG or wGAR, Namestnikov has garnered the Jets fringe top-six value at a very reasonable price, both in trade costs and extension salary.
sG suggests that most of Namestnikov’s positive value came from 5v5 offense and penalty differentials. It also suggests the Jets should probably keep him off the power play. This is consistent with his historical performance, as he’s never been one to provide much power play value.
That said, I think he’s a pretty solid example of how the Jets’ performance on the penalty kill was more systemic and not personnel. Vlad has historically been a strong penalty killer but struggled last year.
Speaking of historical performance, looking at Namestnikov’s aging curve, it seems that the versatile forward has found a second peak late in his career.
Namestnikov struggled in Ottawa but has predominantly been a pretty solid middle-six forward otherwise throughout his career.
After coming over to the Jets from the Sharks in return for a 4th round pick in 2025, Namestnikov has been a valuable and useful contributor to the Winnipeg Jets. This is especially after extending for two seasons for $2 million.
The Jets have one more year left of that extension, where Namestnikov will hopefully continue to show doubters that he’s been just as valuable as a 5x $5M+ option.
Alex Iafallo
Alex Iafallo didn’t have a great season, but I think some of the criticism on him is a bit unfair.
For one, Iafallo is not, and has never been, an offensive catalyst. He’s typically hurt chance creation and linemate finishing, and he’s never been a strong finisher himself. But, he still has immense value in his defensive abilities.
Iafallo is a sponge that dries out chances for everyone… for better or for worse.
That is value and that value for him has been increadibly consistent:
This remains true whether you are looking at GAR, xGAR, or sG.
I believe one of the biggest issues is that Iafallo was miscast in Winnipeg. When it was announced that Iafallo would be part of the PLD return, I thought Iafallo would be the perfect match for Adam Lowry in a purely defensive, hard-matched shutdown line.
It appears that Bowness thought the same, as the winger started the season beside Lowry and Mason Appleton.
That changed quickly, and Iafallo was soon moved to play beside Mark Scheifele and Kyle Connor. That lasted quite some time too, as those two were the most common linemates Iafallo played with last season.
It was a poor fit, and both the line and the Jets struggled for it.
He also started off getting a sizeable power play deployment early on, although that fortunately shifted to penalty kill usage as the season went on.
I think the other, and most glaring issue, was that Iafallo carries a $4 million dollar cap hit. That ties him with Niederreiter for fourth highest of the Jets’ forwards. When fans see large salaries, people expect offensive production. Scoring has never been a major part of Iafallo’s game.
Again, he is useful… but in the right role.
He fit well with Namestnikov and Perfetti, and I’m sure he could fit just fine with Lowry as well if given enough time.
The question remains, though, whether or not the Jets want to move, extend, or keep him as an “own rental” with his $4 million dollar contract expiring next summer.
Final Thoughts
The trio of Perfetti, Namestnikov, and Iafallo are all three solid middle-six contributing forwards. They also worked very well together as a middle-six line when Ehlers stepped up to the top line.
Unfortunately, all three of them saw their usage decrease with the return of Kyle Connor and the deadline additions of Sean Monahan and Tyler Toffoli.
Connor, Monahan, and Toffoli are good players, and it would have been nice if the Jets had made a line of these new players and kept the other three combinations that worked. The Jets would have then played a very strong middle-six line as a fourth line.
Instead, we saw something a bit different. Whether that was due to a stubborn coaching staff who wanted to see their preconceived opinions justified or locker room politics and dynamics, the decision-making left much to be desired.
SUMMER SERIES THUS FAR
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