Weekly Review:

Jets weekly review and preview, prospects update, and trending news.

Welcome to The Five Hohl—the best (and only, as far as I know) newsletter entirely dedicated to in-depth, evidence-based analysis of all things Winnipeg Jets. If you're into hockey analytics in general, you’ll find some solid insights here too.

Like most Mondays review days, we’ll review last week, preview the week ahead, check out Jets prospects, and dive into trending topics.

As a warning, I didn’t have time to edit this post… so I appologize for more grammar and spelling mistakes, plus more rambling nature, than regular.

QUICK LIFE UPDATE

Children are the plague. Talked about how I’m over being sick last Monday only to have my entire clan in this house to get everything bad. Now I’m very short on sleep. Someone send help!

I’ve fallen behind once again, and now trying to catch up. The joy of trying to juggle responsibilities. Like I said, December (and early January) is going to be a tough one.

I had missed 2 periods from each of the last three games (I’m sure many that follow my live posting on BlueSky and Twitter noticed). Caught up half way though. Three down, three to go.

This article was written on Monday, but I wanted to get it out even if some of it is a little out of date with the recent performance against Boston.

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JETS WEEKLY REVIEW

Well, 2-2-0 is certainly better than 1-3-0, so that’s a step in the right direction.

The Winnipeg Jets are in a three-way tie for first overall at 40 points, and are the first team to 20 wins, although by points% they sit fourth in the NHL.

An 20-9-0 record is still pretty darn good, but —as I said last week— this regression makes some wonder which version of the Jets is closer to the real thing. The team won an impressive, record setting, amount of games at the start but it wouldn’t have taken much for that start to have looked a bit different given three games were won in the coinflip that is overtime.

In terms of the underlying fundamentals with shot volume and shot quality, the hot streak Jets and losing Jets are not that dissimilar:

After having a huge head start over the rest of the league, the Jets now are 7 goals behind the Washington Capitols. Still, it’s not like being +28 in second place is bad. However, it’s still a fall from the grace that once was.

The Jets are also no longer in the lead for goal differential relative to ice time. Here’s a look at where they rank (and how they’ve shifted) across key goal differential components via Evolving-Hockey.com:

• 16th in shot differential impact (up 2 spots)

• 21st in shot quality per shot impact (down 7 spots)

• 3rd in finishing impact (down 2 spots)

• 2nd in goaltending impact (up 1 spots)

If you have been following along, you start to see why shot differential impact is a stronger signal of long term performance, given how much most of these numbers (especially shot quality) have shot around.

It’s actually wild that the Jets’ shot quality impact has dropped down 15 ranking spots over the past 2 weeks combined.

Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus (RAPM) adjusts for team strength and opponent quality. Here’s where the Jets stand:

Even Strength:

• 9th in goal differential (down 3 spots)

• 20th in expected goal differential (no change)

• 15th in Corsi differential (up 3 spots)

Power Play:

• 4th in goal production (down 2 spots)

• 23rd in expected goal production (down 5 spots)

• 27th in Corsi production (down 3 spots)

Penalty Kill:

• 20th in goal prevention (no change)

• 30th in expected goal prevention (down 1 spot)

• 26th in Corsi prevention (no change)

The Jets power play continues to crash, as both their finishing, shot volume, and shot quality with man advantage or greater has fallen apart. The special teams were the biggest change and the most significant improvement from last year’s Jets, a team that was successful in the regular season in spurts but ultimately a pretty easy out in the post-season.

Oddly, and somewhat ironically, the biggest cause fo the power play’s collapse was the one player who I am both simultaneously accused of being extremely positively biased towards and also have stated on many occasions being fairly pedestrian on the power play:

Still, the loss of Ehlers has been felt more there than anywhere else. His ability to retrieve loose pucks in the offensive zone and force unpredictable movement from the Jets players was the straw that stirred the best power play in the NHL’s drink.

That said, even with Ehelrs, they were still overly fortunate and performing at an unsustainable clip.

The HockeyViz model incorporates blocked shots, schedule effects, and coaching impacts:

There’s not a whole lotta change here from last week.

• 5v5 Offense (top left): The Jets create fewer quality chances than NHL average.

• Power Play (top right): The power play struggles in the same manner by an even more significant margin.

• Finishing (top middle): The Jets started off hot scoring, but that has since predictably dried up and their goal per expected goal pace has fallen halfway towards average over the past few weeks.

• 5v5 Defense (bottom left): The Jets are still an above average defensive team at even strength and is one of their few strengths outside of goaltending.

• Penalty Kill (bottom right): The penalty kill has been a disaster after a strong start early on in the year. I remember being excited that the Jets v2.0 might have an above average penalty kill for the first time.

• Goaltending (bottom middle): There’s always you, Connor. Jets’ goaltending has only allowed 0.856 goals per expected goal.

As mentioned last week, the Jets have already banked quite a few points. Pacing at a well below league average 0.500 for the remainder of the season puts them just barely above the projected playoff line, and with Connor Hellebuyck the overall team is much better than 0.500.

It’s weird to say this about a team tied for first place, but the holes are exposed and the cracks are starting to show. If the Jets’ do not make improvements and adjustments, they will likely be another easy out in the post-season.

THE GAMES

Game 26: St. Louis Blues at Winnipeg Jets

That, that was rough.

The Jets were playing against a recently struggling St Louis Blues, but couldn’t make the game much more easier for them. The Blues doubled the Jets’ expected goal creation and there were very few Jets above par.

Despite all their efforts, Hellebuyck actually kept his team in the game for quite some while, but eventually the levy broke.

Game 27: Winnipeg Jets at Buffalo Sabres

In terms of both goals and chances, the game started off as quite the back and forth. The Jets then started to put the pressure on not long after the Cozen’s goal.

Once again, one of the supposedly best teams in the league fell asleep at the wheel for a long stretch of the game, requiring Hellebuyck to hold down the fort.

It was actually a pretty decent game all things considering for the Jets’ top line.

Game 28: Winnipeg Jets at Chicago Blackhawks

The Chicago Blackhawks are not a very good team. They have Connor Bedard but they are not constructed in a manner to get out of the deep hole they have created in the rebuild’s dive down for such a player.

Just look at this:

Game 29: Winnipeg Jets at Dallas Stars

In the recent stretch of games with more losses than wins, it’s not common to see a game where the Jets were able to go tit-for-tat with their oponnent but still lose signifcantly via their goalie being outplayed by the opposition’s netminder.

Not to hang this on Comrie, as it wasn’t like the Jets really deserved to win either.

PROSPECT RECAP

MANITOBA MOOSE

The Manitoba Moose lost once again… twice scoring three goals, and twice having a lead only to ultimately fall apart.

The Moose split their two games against the Wolves last week: a 0-5 loss and a 4-2 win.

• Chaz Lucius: He has struggled to stay healthy all his career, but if the Jets can make this project work he may end up being the best forward prospect the Jets’ have had for quite some while.

• Nikita Chibrikov: Scored a goal and had a strong showing, earning himself a call up.

• Elias Salomonsson: Scored two assists but had a pretty nasty fall, missing the second game.

• Jaret Anderson-Dolan: After giving him some criticism last week, JAD scores a goal and an assist.

• Kaapo Kahkonen & Thomas Milic: The two have a 0.857 and 0.873 on the Moose. While I don’t blame them for Manitoba’s division worst record, they are not helping.

• Domenic DiVincentiis: Is having an easier time in the ECHL. He is undefeated in six games, despite a solid but not spectacular 0.914 save percentage.

• No one noticed the title used to say Moosey on the table instead of Moose. :(

AROUND THE WORLD

Some quick notes:

• Kristian Vesalainen: No games played.

• Dmitry Rashevsky: Scored another three goals. He looking more like the goal scorer we were accustomed too.

• Kieron Walton: Walton continues to put up points, with another four assists over two games.

• Brayden Yager: Yager leap fromgs He since the trade to Lethbridge. In two games Yager has a goal and three assists.

• Kevin He: He puts up two assists over two games.

• Connor Levis: There may be a steep cliff between He and Levis, but Levis is Mr. Consisitent, with another goal and three assists in four games played.

• Colby Barlow: Barlow is finally starting to look like his old self, putting up four gals and two assists in three games. I still have some skepticism of Barlow as a top-end prospect, but he does seem to be getting his goal scoring groove back.

• Alfons Freij: Tallied a point for the third week in a row. That’s good to see he is scoring with such minimal deployment.

• Markus Loponen: Tallied an assist over three games.

• Zachary Nehring: It’s been a while since we’ve heard of Nehring getting a point on the score sheet. He picked up an assist over two games.

• Jacob Julien: I miss last year’s Julien.

• Garrett Brown: Played two games.

CURRENT NEWS:

Kyle Connor

I’ve been hard on Kyle Connor before. Connor is very good at scoring goals, which is important. However, he tends to be overvalued since he harms the Jets in many other facets of the game.

This is why I usually argue that the skater that many fans and media claim is the Winnipeg Jets most underrated skater is actually their most overrated.

The fancy stats all suggest it, but even the non fancy ones. Since he entered the leage and prior to this year, the Winnipeg Jets have allowed more goals than they have scored every year except three.

One of those of which was the Jets 2017-18 campaign, and the other were the two seasons under Rick Bowness, with a paltry +0 and +1 rating.

However, Connor has been legitimately much better this season, and probably the only player actually performing like a top-line forward on the top line:

It’s not every year you see someone post their best year at age 28.

Is it too early to worry about Cole Perfetti

Cole Perfetti isn’t having the greatest of seasons. The kid is young, but he’s on his third season of a downward trend:

I like the player in the offensive zone, and he’s actually very responsible defensively. But he’s not tilting the ice as his transition game has been very underwhelming.

He literally has a higher percentage of zone exits being chip outs than any other Jet skater. He’s also dumping the puck in as often as Mason Appleton, who is on the Jets’ dump-and-chase specialty line.

I don’t quite get it and I don’t agree with it. I worry that it’s his lack of speed forcing him to chip out pucks in transition as he doesn’t have the time to do anything better.

PLD

I’m going to get called negative, but I’m going to ruffle some feathers.

I give Kevin Cheveldayoff top marks for trading a player who wanted out and was wanting an overly bloated contract for a comparable but younger forward with three additional pieces.

But, everyone I see who revisits the trade talks up Vilardi as if he’s so much exceedingly better than Dubois.

I don’t see it, and neither do the numbers.

Again, huge W for Chevy and an A+ trade, but let’s still avoid the hyperbole just because the PLD situation unfolded suboptimally.

The Top Line

I have a longer article on the top line that I started a few weeks back. But, I’ve had some trolls on Twitter mad. They claim I cherry pick data, while ironically using their legitimately strong —but singular game— performance against the Bruins as proof I am wrong.

So, with their recent strong performance pulling up the results, let’s look at how they’ve been thus far.

A reminder, in the pre-season, I did remind everyone that despite the team playing well, the trio of Kyle Connor, Mark Scheifele, and Gabriel Vilardi produced very poor results together at 5v5. However, I also said that I didn’t expect them in the long run to be that bad and understood the Jets’ brass would want to give it another shot.

I had suggested that the Jets follow a simple decision flowchart:

1. If they are playing well, with both a strong Corsi and goal differential, keep them together.

2. If they are playing poorly, with both a weak Corsi and goal differential, break them apart immediately as we have seen this song and dance before.

3. However, if the results are middling, or if they are doing well in one of the two metrics, then keep them together for as long as the team is still doing well.

So, how are things?

Looking at Natural Stat Trick, the trio at 5v5 together are a 50.7% Corsi together this season (48.4% both seasons combined) and a +0.63 per hour (+0.20).

Is that good? Bad? Meh?

Luckily, I’m the first person who 10 years ago actually (publically) looked at performances for different lines of players to actually create the contextual information we need:

An average top line forward from 2007-2012 posted a 52% Corsi and a +0.39 goal differential per hour.

So, the Jets’ top line have been out shot when looking at this season or over their entire time together. This places them about the bottom 20th percentile overall, but around the 40th percentile when looking just at this season.

Goal differential looks a bit better. They are around the 40th percentile for over all sample, and 60th for this season.

If you want to look at this season exclusively, and only at goal differential, after a game where they had +3 of their total +4, they have been above average.

However, the Jets’ do employ the world’s greatest goal differential booster in Connor Hellebuyck, and the Jets’ goal differential actually is better with the top line on the bench than on the ice, and Corsi is a much, much stronger signal of how a player will perform in the future for outscoring than past outscoring:

But, I’m saying that for context; I’m not about to move the goal posts.

Going back to the decision chart, the top line is doing well in goal differential and poorly in shot differential. So, we can skip #1 and #2. This brings us to #3.

The Jets’ don’t want to be a mid, 50-60th percentile team, so you could argue even the goal differential results are still not great. Still, in step number three it’s more about team performance.

If the team has been performing well, we can continue the experiment, and keep Kyle Connor with Mark Scheifele.

Now, going back to what we saw at the start of this article, how would you say the team is performing at 5v5?

PAID-SUBSCRIBER WEDNESDAY PREVIEW

Normally paid subscriber content comes on Wednesday’s but since this review is after Wednesday, I have placed the usual data and graphs on microstats behind a paywall at the end of this post.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Thank you once again for reading this week’s Monday Review.

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