All the points a team gains in October count the same as the ones they get in April. Good news for all the Libras out there. The Winnipeg Jets can comfort themselves with that. They don’t have to give back their standing, second in the Central with eight of a possible ten points, and those will still count when they hand out playoff spots come the end of the season. That’s good, because the Jets current ways probably won’t keep earning them 80 percent of the points on offer for much longer.
It also buys the Jets time to sort out what’s not going right, which is a lot of things beneath their top line and in front of Connor Hellebuyck. They very well may need a lot of it.
How are the Jets near the top of the standing again? It helps when just about every shot a team takes ends up causing a goalie to look at the rafters in despair (or in the Winnipeg’s case, just at a lovely portrait of Queen Elizabeth). The Jets are shooting 15 percent so far on the season at even-strength, which far and away leads the league. You don’t have to ask questions if you never miss.
You have to ask even less when your goalie has turned into the walls of Troy (they did stand up for a very long time before that one story you know), at least on the power play. Connor Hellebuyck has surrendered just one goal while down a man, and is rocking a .968 save-percentage on the kill.
But look under the hood, and it there are mice in the engine. The Jets really miss Adam Lowry, as Jonathan Toews is getting mullered out there. Oh, he’s winning enough faceoffs to make crusty, Canadian TV analysts weak in the knees, but that’s it. Toews has sub-40% marks in attempts and expected goals share, and that’s with splitting his zone starts evenly between the offensive zone and outside of it. So far, he hasn’t been able to keep up, and the Jets are suffering when he’s on the ice. He’s been tossed from filling in for Lowry to the third- and fourth-line of late.
Vlad Namestnikov hasn’t fared much better in between Nino Neiderreiter and Gustav Nyquist, the latter of whom might be clinically dead, anyway.
Behind that, on the blue line, Dylan Samberg is apparently a bigger mess than would have been guessed. Below the top pairing of Josh Morrissey and Dylan Demelo, the Jets have basically been a runway into their zone. Luke Schenn has been a crash test dummy for years and was always a bad idea anywhere on the roster. But Neal Pionk and Logan Stanley have been this for most of the season, too. And not the bulldog.
Samberg and Lowry will eventually return, and that should even out some of these problems. However, they aren’t going to make Niederreiter, or Nyquist, or Namestnikov any younger, as all are well over 30. Morgan Barron isn’t going to continue to shoot 60 percent (he literally is). Mark Scheifele and Kyle Connor can outskate and outskate a lot of problems. Hellebuyck can stonewall some more. But the Jets don’t want to test the limits on those.
The Winnipeg Jets Are Rotten Under The Hood