Who are the Jets and what do they need to win: Part 2
We look at the Winnipeg Jets in gearing up for the trade deadline
Welcome to The Five Hohl
The best deep-dive hockey analytics blog focusing on the Winnipeg Jets. Also the worst. We’re 1/1—winner by default. Yay! (That’s what we said last time.)
Originally, this was going to be one article, but it got reaaaaaally long. So, this is part one of what could be a three- or four-part series. The next installment(s) will cover specific trade targets… I know I said that last time, but my goodness, there’s a lot to cover.
In the meantime, I’ll also be dropping a short prospect update, plus a microstats breakdown for paid subscribers, likely on Thursday (since I’m traveling this week).
Since I am flying out this week and preparing for that, this week’s post is a bit shorter… but it touches on some things I wanted to speak about prior to the trade deadline.
FIRST, A RECAP
Last week, we discussed who were the Jets in terms of team performance and went over this vizual (well the below one has one week’s worth of games added to it):
These charts display the Winnipeg Jets' performance in the six primary factors that contribute to outscoring opponents—ultimately leading to wins.
The top three categories focus on offense, while the bottom three cover defense.
The corners measure shot quantity and quality combined, while the middle sections evaluate conversion relative to those factors.
The left side represents 5v5 play, and the right side covers special teams.
Red/orange (brown) indicates more shots or goals than league average (good for offense, bad for defense), while blue/purple signals below-average volume (bad for offense, good for defense).
Essentially, the Jets are a team with a wicked power play and goaltending execution, above-average 5v5 defense, average 5v5 offense, and a below-average penalty kill.
We then compared that regular-season performance to previous Cup winners and the Jets last season as well.
In summary, the Jets are good enough to win but could improve in some areas. The biggest shortfall would be in their 5v5 offense, which is the most consistent marker of eventual Stanley Cup success and the strongest after goaltending.
We then went into the narratives surrounding performance differences in the playoffs versus the regular season and how much weight we should really give those ideas. We then came to the conclusion that the Jets should improve by targeting players for their overall impact on the game rather than targeting players for their physical attributes or experience.
This isn’t to say that qualitative factors do not matter, as they carry important information as well. But it should start and end with the objective information on how well players improve the Jets’ chances at out-chancing and outscoring their opponent.
Finally, using HockeyViz’s sG model, this is essentially how the Jets’ depth chart looks in terms of each player’s isolated performance once one adjusts for ice time, environment, and deployment:
The Jets’ strength in their roster (aside from the greatest goaltender of this generation) is their depth at forward and top-end performers on defense. Their weakness would then be the lack of top-end performers at forward and support pieces on defense.
Generally speaking, the NHL is more of a strong-linked sport than a weak-linked one; this is even truer in the playoffs when coaches heavily lean on “their guy(s)” that got them there and the competitive level increases.
FYI: A strong-linked sport is when a team’s best players drive success, while a weak-linked sport is when a team’s worst players determine success.
If hockey were weak-linked, the Jets’ forward roster would be perfectly built for that. But alas, it is not. So, the Jets could use some more top-six forward support, with the most obvious hole being in the second-line center spot.
The best-case scenario would have that person be strong at 5v5, especially in driving offense, and on the penalty kill. Helping the second-unit power play would also be quite beneficial.
The Jets could also use stronger partners to pair up with their elite left-shot defenders, Josh Morrissey and Dylan Samberg, but it would be most impactful if the team could somehow do so without sacrificing Colin Miller.
In addition, upgrading Logan Stanley on the left side would also help the Jets extensively. Ville Heinola could be that guy and has some upside but does not kill penalties like the Jets wish for their third-pairing left defender. And while Haydn Fleury has been better than Stanley, that doesn’t say much.
EVIDENCE BASED ROSTER CONSTRUCTION
I wanted to bring together some key concepts that have developed over years of research and experience.
Optimizing a roster is about balancing two slightly opposing factors.
It is generally important that the impact of your skaters increases as you move up the roster. This is both because, as you move up the roster, skaters play a larger percentage of the game and because each of the minutes they play is increasingly more efficacious.
You want your top line to perform better than your second line, your second line better than your third line, and so on.
However, ignoring role and chemistry effects, there is a diminishing effect with the next-best player placed on each line.
The best player on a line drives that line’s value more than the second or third-best skater. Stacking your top line as much as possible may be suboptimal, and you may wish to spread out the talent more.
Swapping your third-best skater for your fourth-best from the top line, where they are the third most important player on the line, to the second line, where they are the most important individual, may net a positive trade-off.
This is why it’s not altogether a bad thing that the Jets have a top-line-performing skater on each line (Kyle Connor, Nikolaj Ehlers, and Adam Lowry/Nino Niederreiter) rather than stacking them together. And that’s even before accounting for chemistry effects or optimal role usage for their individual skill sets.
THE JETS TOP LINE
As we mentioned, the top line is the most important in optimal roster construction and in strong-linked sport performance.
I’ve been mostly silent on the Winnipeg Jets’ top line of Mark Scheifele, Kyle Connor, and Gabriel Vilardi. This silence extends from the team performing well as a whole and the fact that the trio has been much better this season than the previous year.
However, this does not mean all worries are washed away, everything is all good, and that I was wrong about my pre-season concerns.
The Jets have a long history of placing Connor and Scheifele together, with pretty disastrous results. The solution previously has been to put Ehlers with them instead.
When Kevin Cheveldayoff turned Pierre-Luc Dubois into Vilardi, Alex Iafallo, and Rasmus Kupari (and a pick that turned into Alfons Freij), I suggested that Vilardi could be a player that makes Scheifele and Connor work.
That wasn’t the case last year.
Still, this pre-season, I suggested it wasn’t a bad thing to try again given the injuries last year. I suggested that if I were the Jets, I’d try it and would follow this decision tree:
If both Corsi and goal differential performance are good, keep.
If only one metric is good, keep only if the Jets are winning.
If both are bad, break them up as there is no change from last year.
While “good” is a relative term, we’ve been predominantly in scenario 2. The Jets’ top line has outscored opponents like a 75th percentile top line but has only outshot like a 40th percentile top line.
They have been better, but they still are not the best we’ve seen.
So, yeah, the Winnipeg Jets' top line at 5v5 has been better than last year and average-to-above-average as far as first lines go. That’s good, but not the exceptional level one would hope for when the competition rises in the playoffs.
There’s one other issue to note:
As we mentioned earlier, you generally want performance to improve as you move up the roster. Yet, in three out of four metrics, it’s been the opposite.
Again, good, but not great or optimal. If the goal is the Stanley Cup, then "good" is too low of a standard.
All this is to say that while most are constructing post-trade deadline rosters for the Jets by replacing Vlad Namestnikov on the second line, there is still room to adjust the top nine. There’s both empirical and theoretical basis for doing that as well.
I understand you don’t want to fix what isn’t broken, but hockey is not a dichotomous sport where things are either perfect or wrong. There are degrees, and the Jets can and should be optimized.
Still, that might not be likely. The Jets seem to really like their current composition.
There are only seventeen unique forward trio combinations to play at least 300 minutes at 5v5 together. The Jets have three of them in the same top-nine trios you see listed in the last visual.
This seems especially true for the Jets' top line, given that they have now played 700 minutes together this season. Only eight combinations have over 400 minutes in the NHL, and only two have over 500 minutes.
THE JETS DEFENSIVE PAIRS
The Jets’ defensive group displays some similar weaknesses as the forwards.
While the Jets have been good on the whole, the top pairing has struggled somewhat similarly to the top line. I’m sure the two are connected as well since they do play a lot together.
While Josh Morrissey and Dylan DeMelo play predominately with the Scheifele line, the Dylan Samberg and Neil Pionk pairing plays mostly with the Namestnikov and Lowry lines.
This causes some muddying in the results, but generally speaking the Jets’ “second pair” has outperformed the top pair. I put “second pair” in quotes because the Samberg pair has actually averaged more minutes as a unit ever since his return from injury.
More ice time for Samberg is great, but less for Morrissey and more for Pionk is less than ideal.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
The Jets are a good team. They are elite in some areas of performance and individuals, and have some weaknesses elsewhere.
The good news is that the Jets can try to improve those weaknesses in the trade deadline.
The most best case scenario spots are a second line centre, a top-four right-shot defender while moving out one of Neal Pionk or Dylan DeMelo, and a third pairing left-shot difender.
That said, the Jets do have enough room to add two top-six forwawrd pieces rather than one if they really want to push things to another level.