Let’s celebrate with poor SEO structure, burying the lead, and just catching up... because why not.
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The Winnipeg Jets won the Presidents’ Trophy merely two seasons ago.
They followed that up with a disaster season stemming from a disastrous trade deadline and summer of team building.
They brought in slow, aging veterans who almost all had terrible statistical profiles. They also simultaneously gave their slow, aging skaters with terrible statistical profiles even more ice time than the previous season.
All in response to losing their best minute-for-minute player on the roster to the Carolina Hurricanes, who went on to become arguably a top-ten performer in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The strategy made no sense, and in return the Jets sat at the literal bottom of the standings for stretches at a time.
And it wasn’t as if this was some wild or unpredictable fluke season filled with bad luck.
I literally predicted a significant drop for the Winnipeg Jets after the dust settled from their summer moves.
To take a look at what this might look like, I used Evolving-Hockey’s Goals Above Replacement projection model and compared those numbers to the GAR performance of a player in the same projected role last season.
In other words, 2025–26 projected Kyle Connor is compared to 2025–26 Connor, but I have Toews taking Namestnikov’s spot, Nyquist taking Ehlers’, Iafallo taking Appleton’s, Namestnikov taking Kupari’s, and the two new guys taking JAD/Tanev’s and Iafallo’s spots.
The results are at first quite startling; we’re talking about a near 100-goal drop, which works out to about 30 points in the standings.
It was a predicted 30-point drop in the standings. The actual standings drop was 34 points.
Sure, some players performed better than what we see projected above, and some performed worse. That’s expected.
The average result, though, was pretty much on the money.
So... let’s chat about a few things that happened and what may happen moving forward.
Winnipeg Jets’ Goaltending and The Connor Hellebuyck Situation
I’ve seen quite a few arguments online about how much blame should be shifted to Connor Hellebuyck. The future Hall of Fame netminder just won the Hart and Vezina, while the team won the Jennings.
So, how much blame belongs with each?
The truth is the Winnipeg Jets were significantly worse defensively than in previous seasons. Hockeyviz.com estimated that the Jets were giving up nearly one additional goal per 100 shots in shot quality compared to the previous year.
That said, it was also a poor season for Connor Hellebuyck, or at least it became one.
On average, Hellebuyck still provided an sG value of about +3.3 goals. That’s still above average, technically speaking.
That said, the timing was heavily slanted. Early on, when Winnipeg was winning, Hellebuyck was his typical self. But when Hellebuyck started to slide, so did the team.
And that’s kind of been the Winnipeg Jets, for better or worse, for the past decade or so.
It’s a tough league to win in, and the Jets were a team built sub-optimally. They were always a team that would only go as far as Connor Hellebuyck could carry them.
Don’t get me wrong, the Winnipeg Jets have some really, really good players. However, so do the other 31 teams in the NHL.
The Jets don’t have the Connor McDavids, Nathan MacKinnons, or other elite stars at forward to drive the team. Nor do they have the depth of the Carolina Hurricanes.
So, if this team is truly going to have a competitive future without Connor Hellebuyck, they have to look at their roster differently.
Teams love to overvalue what they have. It’s a completely normal and natural human bias. It’s a known phenomenon called the endowment effect. Fans fall into this online all the time, but so do team front offices.
Speaking of which...
The 2025-26 Winnipeg Jets and What it takes to win
The above shows the performance of the Winnipeg Jets last year in red, some key Jets seasons in various shades of green, and previous Cup winners in blue. This is looking at regular season performance only, using Hockeyviz.com metrics.
The short version is that 5v5 offense is the metric most consistently related to winning the Cup, followed by goaltending. Then the three metrics of finishing, power play, and 5v5 defense all have some relationship with winning, while penalty killing has a very weak relationship.
There’s also a very clear indication that there’s more than one way to win, but you still have to be good.
You need to be lucky to win the Cup, but you need to be good enough to have the opportunity to be lucky.
Please note that these results are seasonal averages. They slightly undervalue trends, like the 2017-18 Jets, who became much better after adding Paul Stastny at the trade deadline and finally getting healthy after missing large chunks of time with Mark Scheifele, Adam Lowry, Dustin Byfuglien, Tobias Enstrom, and Jacob Trouba.
Even in Winnipeg’s good years, they’ve never been strong in the most important measure: even-strength chance production.
I’ve argued multiple times over the past 15 years that Winnipeg tries too hard to be a team that wins through defense, both in structure and player selection.
Nowhere is that more obvious than in how they select their third-pairing defenders and fourth-line forwards.
The team consistently looks for guys who play physical, “safe” (read: simple and predictable), stereotypical penalty-killing hockey over players who consistently outplayed them in the same role.
Why trade futures for a downgrade on defense who ended up being one of the worst performers in the NHL?
Why keep the better-performing defender in the press box or in the AHL?
Why draft and develop from within when you can just block young players with bad veterans?
The choices the Jets made were small individually, but they compounded into larger problems, making the team slower, older, and much, much worse.
The ironic bit, though, was that the options they chose led to worse results both offensively and defensively.
Don’t get me wrong... I don’t think the Jets are stupid or are just making stupid decisions.
I do think, though, that teams often miss what is actually making successful teams successful.
The Carolina Hurricanes are tenacious on the forecheck. That’s their system, and those are the player types they like to target.
Eric Tulsky (yes, I may be biased as he’s a longtime friend and may or may not have even ghostwritten a few of my early Hockey-Graphs posts) has been exceptional at selecting skaters who have been elevated in Carolina, fitting the role, system, and culture with extraordinary success.
However, they are also mostly just good players.
Look at the Carolina Hurricanes forwards last season in sG:
They have some skaters with poor results, but most of those guys were call-ups or fill-ins. They have 11 skaters who produced top-line results relative to their ice time and usage.
Now here’s Winnipeg:
Keep in mind this is the best sG result Mark Scheifele has had in years and the best Kyle Connor has ever had.
But it’s not just about the top players. It’s about the depth as well.
The Carolina Hurricanes dress forwards who aren’t flashy in their bottom six. They don’t all play a high-skill game. They aren’t scoring in bunches. But they get results.
If they don’t, then they don’t play.
Yes, Rod Brind’Amour likes players who play a certain way, but they still need to perform.
And yeah, Winnipeg can’t just copy everyone. The team is at a well-known disadvantage when it comes to free agents and trade protections.
But I have two responses to those excuses...
One: Most of the skaters available in free agency or with trade protection aren’t the skaters Winnipeg should be targeting anyway.
Two: If you have a disadvantage, you have to start looking for advantages elsewhere. Otherwise, you’re screwed and dictated by that disadvantage.
“If we try to play like the Yankees in here, we will lose to the Yankees out there.”
Random aside on TFH
This article was pushed back a business day because of a surprise birthday party that threw my plans for a loop (in a good way). I have this publishing on Monday, so hopefully no big Hellebuyck trades make all of the above irrelevant haha.
That’s all for today.
I’m gathering up some thoughts to go over the Jets signing, dip into the Hellebuyck trade situation a bit more, and preview what the current roster looks like for the 2026-27 season next time.
After that, I’ll do a lil’ write-up on the Jets’ 2026 draft class and look at their prospect cupboards a bit more objectively.
Signing off!
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