The Jets are Canada’s Best Hope
Plain and simple, but the title is true. The Winnipeg Jets are Canada’s best hope for a Stanley Cup this year and they need to go all-in to make it happen. However, before qualifying what all-in is and how that looks this time frame is not limited to just this season, it goes to next season as well.
For next year there will be 4 critical new deals on the team that have yet to be agreed to or signed. These are for Adam Lowry, Josh Morrissey, Jacob Trouba and Connor Hellebuyck. Remember that Nik Ehlers and Bryan Little both have new deals that come into effect next season while Blake Wheeler enters the last year of his deal. Of lesser importance or concern depending on your point of view is the status if Armia, Dano, Matthias and Poolman, all of whom are RFAs except Matthias a UFA and you can consider Hutchinson too as a UFA.
As it stands the Jets have close to 30 million of ‘deadline cap space’ available to them, which is a lot given where they sit in the standings and the depth within the organization. Before diving in to how that space can be used it should be noted that on the recent 31 Thoughts podcast with Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek, the former mentioned that the Jets might be looking into depth centres and potentially hearing about offers for Byfuglien.
The only reason that makes sense to trade Buff is if he wants out and I’m not sure that’s even the case but it’s been suggested that teams are asking and that’s different from the Jets wanting to move him. If the Jets are indeed Canada’s best hope of ending a 24 year Stanley Cup drought then big Buff and his cup experience are probably held in high value by the coach and GM.
As of this writing(before the Sunday San Jose game) the Jets sit third overall in the NHL. They lead the Central Division and are almost assured of making the post season for the second time since moving from Atlanta to Winnipeg. In the West they are 11, 16, and 18 better than Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. Compared their Eastern Conference Canadian rivals the Jets are 5, 17, and 20 points better than Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa.
The Jets are tied for 4th in the league in goal differential at +24
They are 4th in the league for Goals For at 140
They are 10th in the league for Goals Against at 116
There are no Canadian teams that are ahead of them.
Getting into predictive measures the Jets sit here (all stats at 5v5)
CF% 13th at 50.78% with Calgary, Edmonton and Montreal ahead
xGF% 11th at 51.57% with Calgary and Edmonton ahead
SF/60 14th with 31 with Calgary, Montreal and Edmonton ahead
SA/60 8th and no Canadian teas better
xGF/60 17th with Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto ahead
xGA/60 6th with no Canadian teams better
The point here is that the Jets, right now, have the best chance of doing something no Canadian team has done since 1993 and that’s win the Stanley Cup. They are the most complete of the all the Canadian teams from top to bottom based on skill and performance. They have the best goaltending tandem and the deepest defence corps amongst Canadian teams.
What they do miss is experience with only one player on the team, Byfuglien, who has any deep playoff experience. While it is often dismissed head coach Paul Maurice brings more playoff experience than most of his team.
Maurice is also a lightning rod for Jets fans and even yesterday, when Jack Roslovic started his second NHL game in place of Adam Lowry, the critics were out about his usage on the 4th line as Matthias moved up. The sentiment that Maurice does not know what he’s doing or does not understand player usage or does not comprehend how to use data metrics rings frequent and loud on social media and yesterday was no different.
In this space there has been long criticisms of Maurice for many reasons but as much as he can be seen as the problem for many results he also deserves praise for the current ones. This group of players simply did not arrive at a point and became ‘better’ than they historically were under the same coach, at least not without some explanation.
The mystery to what has made the Jets ‘take off’ this season is still be solved but let’s not rule out a few obvious factors:
Relative good health
Depth through the forwards
Depth through defence
A healthy and vastly underrated Mathieu Perreault
Better managed minutes of certain players
Playing a sound system according to the coach’s strategy
These simple factors can attribute to the Jets success, the numbers that have made many look at this team and suggest they are ‘for real’. They are not perfect, nor does Paul Maurice suggest they are but they are a lot better and now the eye-test and the metrics seem to align more than separate.
Is the team optimized? That’s one question and current issue many wonder about and the basis for optimization comes with player usage and combinations. In a theoretical sense there’s an argument to adjust lines/combinations of players to optimize the team based on what underlying metrics suggest. It would be naive to suggest the team could not be better but in the same sense it’s just as naive to assume that Paul Maurice has not had some if not a lot of positive impact.
There’s merit to the belief that a leopard can’t change his spots, or an old dog can’t learn new tricks and that’s what many believe about Maurice. However, and to his credit, it appears Maurice has learned about the game and the changes that come with it.
For example take the next best team from Canada, the Maple Leafs and compare the two coaches. There is no comparison. Mike Babcock is going to be everyone’s choice 11 times out of 10 but look a little deeper and there appears to be just as much questioning of Babcock right now by the Leafs faithful as there has been of Maurice. In recent weeks Babcock has said things one would associate with a tired coach clinging to old philosophies and even again last night after the OT loss to Columbus. If you want a good taste from a data and hockey perspective on some of Babcock’s decisions and messages go read
Stephen Burtch on Twitter. As he points out there’s lots to be curious about regarding logic, usage, and message.
Paul Maurice has always been an eloquent speaker and very articulate when he so desires. He can fool a person simply on his presentation and for years in Winnipeg he may have done so as many fans have claimed. Even this season in the face of success the Twitter hashtag #Pomomustgo still showed up with frequency. As the season edged on though the Jets’ coach has either become smarter or presented smarter or both. Depending on the forum Maurice will speak about possession, zone time and location, expected goals, shot locations and more. This past Sunday when asked about Roslovic’s game he immediately listed off three specific reads the rookie had to make and how he covered for a mistake by another player. He also explained that it’s no accident that Roslovic was able to do so as he had been playing the same system on the Moose.
Perhaps it’s time to give credit where credit is due here as the records speak for themselves. Have the Jets had the benefit of riding luck this year-certainly. What they have also done while having favourable results is improve their overall game and in one of the most meaningful ways, pace of play with shot rates.
This chart from Micah Blake McCurdy is one of the best to illustrate how far the Jets have come and it seems like a switch was flipped at around the 20 game mark. What’s interesting is at that time Perreault had come back from injury and Trouba minutes had been bumped up as well as some deft tactical changes to break out and zone entries. The result is the Jets, in almost all metrics, are inching to be one of the best teams in the NHL not simply be record but by how they are earning that record.
These are just a few of the really cool graphs that Sean Tierney puts out via his
Sean Tierney Tableau Site website. He and Micah both do an excellent job in visualizing what is happening with the data within the underlying numbers of the Jets. Here are few more from Tierney.
Not everything puts the Jets in a favourable light in terms of top talent but what they do show is that across the board this is Canada’s best bet to end the drought. The Jets are not the greatest team, nor are they so much better than the only other real options of Toronto and Calgary but as the metrics say, and perhaps the roster too, they are the most complete. That may change but if you had a spare $100 to put down on which Canadian team makes it the furthest this post season it might not be a bad bet to choose the Jets.
Winnipeg Jets Blogger •Winnipeg Jets Writer • 
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