Ruffled feathers, and the remaining flock

As originally written on July 5th, 2019. This piece is very long (~10 minutes reading) that surmises my thoughts of the past 2018-19 season, the current 2019 off-season, and a reflection of an idea I have had before going into the next.

“We’ve got a few ruffled feathers in there that we’re going to have to flatten out before we get going.”

It’s a line that sticks out in an end-of-season scrum after the Winnipeg Jets bowed out of the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs earlier than expected. It was probably the only crack in Paul Maurice’s press conference in 30 minutes of speaking in a hushed, disappointed, and monotone voice. That kind of quote ripples across the off-season and latches onto the discussions and moves surrounding the team - a kind of off-season where his boss, Kevin Cheveldayoff, might have been forced to make changes not just due to cap but because of culture.



Asked about it again only two months later at the 2019 NHL Draft, Paul Maurice responded:

“Was that the end of the year? What’s the bigger context on that?” “Well no, we’re all growl-y… you wanna bring a little bit of that pain back too, you wanna keep some of that. Y’know, sour is a better word…”

It’s certainly one hell of a difference, is it not? You can almost summarize it that the boys in the room just need a Summer break away from each other and come back hungrier, and that should make all the difference in the world. Never mind the departure of Jacob Trouba earlier in the week for an underwhelming return, and the eventual exodus of Tyler Myers, Brandon Tanev, and Ben Chiarot to Vancouver, Pittsburgh, and Montreal respectively later on. Nope – “last thing you want is everyone coming back happy next year.”

Yet, Day 2 of the NHL’s free agency saw the Winnipeg Jets acquire Anthony Bitetto and Mark Letestu both to 1-year, 2-way contracts – players who are characterized as great characters in front of the media and are hopefully even better in the room. Neither of their results on the ice are particularly inspiring to look at, with Bitetto hopefully never actually seeing any NHL ice time during his stay in Winnipeg due to an abysmal defensive pedigree, while Letestu might at least be able to put up respectable defensive numbers (though also virtually no offensive numbers at all).

It’s hard to believe – a few seasons after a young squad had post-game handshakes thanks to an earned win, and a season after its perceived talent exploded into reality... the disappointing end to a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 2018-19 season has seen many rumblings and reverberations of unhappiness in its team and its room. Blake Wheeler, previously seen as the heart-and-soul of the team, now has his warts of demanding and getting too much favouritism from his Head Coach. Mark Scheifele, the spry and kind Canadian that never seems to take a day off training who would undoubtedly be the Captain of the Jets, has been criticized for his focus on offense and points and lack of defensive responsibility in his own end. Even Dustin Byfuglien, the proverbial friendly giant who everyone loves to have but hates to play against, has been out of the spotlight of team leadership even though he wears an 'A', in part due to his injury but mostly his frequent shying away from the media.

Whether these cracks in press conferences or not-so-subtle 'good-in-the-room' signings are now stymied issues of the team finally coming out, or simply a response to a more critical look on a season that was not nearly as good as it was at first glance, there’s a hard reality now facing the Hockey Operations of the Winnipeg Jets: not a lot of players are happy, and with the departures of mainstay players such as Trouba, Myers, Tanev, Chiarot – it might not get better.

The Remaining Constant

The 2017-18 and 2018-19 rosters were nearly identical – the only differences being: not having the ace-in-the-hole at the Trade Deadline, Paul Stastny, stay with the team; Toby Enstrom returning home overseas; and Joel Armia being used to offload Steve Mason’s contract. The ‘core’ remained largely intact, with Connor Hellebuyck and Wheeler signing long term deals, Adam Lowry signing for a shorter 3-year deal, and Scheifele and Nikolaj Ehlers’ contracts only just beginning.

Yet, even though their winning ways continued on during the start of the season, underneath it all there was a state of worry from some. In December, Murat Ates of The Athletic summarized it best, that despite shaky goaltending and mounting injury problems, the Jets had been outscoring their problems, displayed as such thanks in part to a stellar November for Patrik Laine. Though certainly struggling, pointing the finger solely at Hellebuyck was not the whole answer for all their woes – the Jets had been giving up way more chances against in comparison to the previous season, though they had been keeping up in creating chances of their own.

Until it all began to crater as the calendar shifted from 2018 to 2019.

Suddenly, there were problems galore. In a 10-game rolling average of Expected Goals For % according to MoneyPuck, they dipped below 50% (and never recovered). Even as things kept creeping down to a ridiculous low of 40% xGF% in the middle of March 2019, things had largely remained the same with only slight changes being made, most of them forced due to injury. What did not change was Maurice’s three key centre-winger pairings: Scheifele-Wheeler were together for 1,148 minutes and only 146 minutes away; Little-Laine were split up more often but still found themselves as their most common pairing for 623 of 1024 minutes; finally, Lowry-Tanev had been together for nearly 800 of 920 minutes. Even amidst the panic and amidst the injuries, these forward pairings largely stayed intact from day 1 to their eventual loss to the Stanley Cup Champions, where (in my opinion) the bad habits established throughout the season and this tough stretch reared their ugly heads.

At least one of these will change now, with Chevy not willing to go to Pittsburgh’s (absolutely ridiculous) offer of 6 years of $3.5m annually for Tanev, forcing Lowry to at least have one new linemate. However, that still leaves Scheifele-Wheeler and Little-Laine to potentially remain the same, no? - is probably what you are asking. I will focus on that in a bit, but I wanted to point out one other remaining constant to tie this all together.

It’s not like Kevin Cheveldayoff exactly has the space to make large moves with the likes of Kyle Connor and Laine likely about to take up a majority of the available cap space for the 2019-20 season. Even if Ehlers were to be traded along with his team-friendly contract, all the surrounding rumours only had him moving should the team receive a comparably friendly value and term for a defenceman. (As an aside, if you are choosing to trade a winger, your first choice should not be a very good Ehlers on a very friendly contract.) Dmitry Kulikov has (perhaps) safely past the buyout period, and Mathieu Perreault still has not been traded though his name has been on the trading block the longest.

For all intents and purposes, it is probably safe to assume the roster looks like the following on the 2019-20 opening day:

(Note that AAVs are merely higher guesses based on Evolving-Wild's contract projections, and that the lineup itself is also a guess based on the previous season.)

So, finally to my point: one thing that has remained the same through all of this is the Head Coach Paul Maurice and his staff. Asked at the 2019 NHL Entry Draft whether or not he envisions any philosophical change from him and his coaching staff after a tumultuous season and early playoff exit, he responded with a metaphor:

“I’m not ready to change the grip. We hit the ball down the fairway an awful lot, had one go in the water obviously in the playoffs – not sure I’m changing my clubs or my grip yet. We’re a pretty good hockey team.”

Whether or not you appreciate the golf analogy, this one struck me as odd. There were obvious problems with the team from the beginning of the season in comparison to the previous year, not just after the cascading problems beginning in the new calendar year. How did Hellebuyck go from a Vezina candidate to a someone who only just rebounded in time for the playoffs? How the team defense go from stellar in front of their own net to giving up chances galore – a difference of -10% threat to +3% according to HockeyViz? How did a power play with the likes of Laine, Scheifele, and Wheeler go for several lengthy periods of no goals actually being scored?

Paul Maurice now enters his sixth full season as Head Coach of the Winnipeg Jets – tied for longest with Jon Cooper of the Tampa Bay Lightning. His assistants have largely remained unchanged other than the departure of Perry Pearn (fired with Claude Noel), Pascal Vincent taking the available Head Coach position with the Manitoba Moose, and the additions of Todd Woodcroft and Jamie Kompon. Over the years, Maurice’s coaching impact on his Club's results has looked like the following (sneak peak courtesy of Micah Blake McCurdy):

In other words, when Paul Maurice instills an effective system for his team, there is an emphasis on defense in front of his net – unfortunately, it only appears to happen at least once during his stays on different teams. Any result on offense can be more attributed to the talent of the players themselves, which is not really unbelievable – though what was shocking this past season was just how nonthreatening the offense actually was at times. They never managed to crack into a positive threat on offense in comparison to the league average no matter the score:

With all that being said, being average in the NHL is certainly a challenge in its own right, and not one to be ignored either. There is certainly an argument to be made that the roster itself in 2018-19 did not perform up to expectations and that Maurice’s influence – as shown earlier from Micah Blake McCurdy – would not have wholly changed much. But as we pointed out earlier, what Maurice did have an influence on was deployment of lines and pairings (for this article, I will look at forwards exclusively), in which we rarely saw a change from Scheifele-Wheeler, Little-Laine, and Lowry-Tanev. When we look at their individual 5v5 With-or-Without Shot Maps:

One has to immediately ask: just what exactly did Paul Maurice over the course of 1,000 minutes, 600 minutes, and 800 minutes respectively to keep these intact over the course of the season – be it through an underwhelming start to the year; or when injuries and defensive errors and lapses in their own ends starting occurring more frequently in January; or when the addition of Hayes only replaced Little as the 2C for a few games past the trade deadline before he returned to pairing 18 and 29 back together; et cetera? If the goal of the top two lines was to get shots from in between the faceoff dots, then it was a somewhat successful endeavour. The ultimate issue was the small shot rate from that area, and not necessarily getting any second chances such as rebounds in the crease. Arguably, only the Lowry-Tanev combo got close, but barely had above league average shot rates anywhere else near the faceoff dot area.

Of course – we have not even addressed the defensive aspect of these combos. Only Lowry-Tanev had respectable shots maps in their own zone, and with the struggles of the top line matching up against their equals, they thusly took on the harder match-ups. In the end, all it had really forced Paul Maurice to do was play his fourth line for four or less shifts a period, and rely on a stacked top-6 that ultimately non-threatening to score.

In the end, it seems to be a mix of an under-performing forward lineup that scored mostly above expectation (though the expectation was frighteningly low at times), thanks to a consistently ill-advised deployment of that lineup – all the while trying to manage the injuries on their blue line.

Revisiting the Idea of an Optimal Lineup through Chemistry

One of my first posts online on JetsNation at the beginning of the 2017-18 season was around this same idea that Maurice’s deployment of his roster was not optimal. The Winnipeg Jets were getting to roll with a lineup that had stacked their top six offensive goals above replacement in the previous two seasons on the top two lines (Perreault, Scheifele, Wheeler, Ehlers, Little, and Laine), while Matthias, Lowry, Armia, Dano, Copp, and Tanev were prepared to toll play role minutes in the bottom six. With the injury to Perreault earlier in the season allowing Connor to return to the NHL lineup and put up 30+ goals in two consecutive seasons (along with Roslovic also getting more valuable minutes), the Jets lineup had become much more balanced once Perreault returned and became contender-worthy when Stastny was added at the trade deadline. I think it is pretty safe to say the 2018-19 lineup was not as balanced.

It seems now is as good a time as ever to revisit the topic. I can summarize the article in three key points (though if you want to revisit it, it is still up here: “Maurice’s Lineups are not Optimal”):

1. There are diminishing returns on having your top talent together on one line, as they can only be on the ice for so long.
2. Hockey is more a strong link game than a weak link game, in that the team with the best player usually wins.
3. Thus, it is better to spread out the top players on different lines rather than putting them together, and it is best to have as strong a player as possible on the ice at all times.

As others (and probably Maurice) would likely argue, unfortunately it is not a guarantee that your top players will mesh well stylistically with the rest of your lineup – the ‘chemistry’, per se. To that end, I borrowed an idea from another article by Ryan Stimson, in which he put together data to cluster the playing styles of combinations of forwards and defencemen as to which had the best expected goals for percentage (you can revisit that article here).

Thanks to further collection by Corey Sznajder, Sean Tierney updated and released a tool to look at each individual player’s microstats (in terms of passing and zone entry) and their clustered playing style. With the limited data collected (I believe it is around 20ish games for each of the past three seasons for the Jets specifically), the Jets results look like the following:

Unfortunately, we may not be able to infer too much from this without further data to be more confident in each player’s style other than ‘balanced’, though we may be able to make some assumptions to help us further, along with the playing styles of the incoming players. As such, I’ve made these assumptions [Player – Style – My reasoning]:

• Adam Lowry – Balanced – Poor zone entries stops him from being an all-around Playmaker. 
• Andrew Copp – Balanced – Likely not enough data; could also be dependent in some cases. 
• Blake Wheeler – Balanced – Creates offense, but not enough and mostly for himself. 
• Bryan Little – Balanced – Creates offense for others, but not of the high danger variety. 
• Jack Roslovic – Balanced – Great in the offensive zone, but needs help getting there in entries. 
• Kyle Connor – Shooter – Likely is classified as Balanced due to high amount of zone entries himself, but doesn’t create much offense for others (other than taking shots himself) and might be limited data. 
• Mark Scheifele – Playmaker – Sometimes takes more shots than a Playmaker would, but contributes highly at all levels.
• Mathieu Perreault – Balanced – Needs more high danger shot creation to be classed as a Playmaker. 
• Nikolaj Ehlers – Playmaker – Takes a lot of shots himself but otherwise creates offense in all facets. 
• Patrik Laine – Shooter – Self-explanatory, though his passing remains underrated. 
• Kristian Vesalainen – Shooter – Similar to Laine, his offensive instincts remain underrated but the hallmark to his style is his shot; could be Dependent as he gets used to the NHL game. 
• Appleton, Chibisov, Letestu – Dependent – Self-explanatory until proven otherwise. 
• Subtotals: Playmaker (2); Balanced (6); Shooter (3); Dependent (4)

Then recall the combinations and their resulting xG%:

Obviously, Playmakers are the most valuable commodity of playing style in the NHL, though few are actually ever on one team. With only supposedly two on the Jets (along with some tweeners like Lowry, Perreault, and Wheeler), it is probably best to keep them apart as to have as high a xG% on all four lines - the idea of having as strong a player (and line) as possible on the ice at all times. As such, this is likely one of the more optimal lineups that can be put together for the Jets:

As mentioned before, the three of Lowry, Perreault, and Wheeler could be considered Playmakers, though one or a few parts of their games lack an aspect to it that puts them into the more desirable playing style - to that end, I have put them together with other Playmakers or Shooters as to possibly see a higher xG%. To note, it is not necessarily a bad thing to be Balanced – so long as you are not surrounding too much of the Balanced playing styles with the Dependents.

Another way of looking at this idea of having a more optimal lineup is by following a slightly elaborate rule-set, using centres as the foundation to each line:

• Scheifele has to be with one of Connor, Laine, or Vesalainen, and one of the remaining options from the next point below.
• Little has to be with two of Ehlers, Perreault, Wheeler, and/or Roslovic.
• Lowry receives the remaining shooter from the top line, and one of the remaining Balanced (or Playmaker tweener) players from the prior point above.
• Copp and the remaining players should be as Balanced as possible (as in, no dependents).

Those rules should allow for you to have three lines at least rolling with an expected goal percentage of 52%+ and getting as close to 50% as possible for the last line. When injuries happen, rather than having the ‘next man up’ who might be argued as deserving more icetime, the playing styles should be honoured first – similar to how Connor was immediately on the first line with Scheifele-Wheeler when called up from the AHL at the beginning of the 2017-18 season.

You will also notice I am trying to refrain from using first, second, third, and fourth lines. Though it gives a sense of hierarchy and structure, I believe it limits one’s perspective on effectively rolling out lines according to matchups, health, and whether certain players or lines are on their game or not. Not everyone will be 100% all of the time, and that is where Maurice comes in through his experience as a coach with his appropriate feel for the room and his players to be able to combine this all together for an efficient and effective deployment scheme – backed up by the data, of course.

Closing Thoughts

As I mentioned in my Tweet yesterday, it is not so much the composition of the Jets' roster that worries me (when excluding the obvious departure of Trouba) as much as its deployment. The assembled group of forwards are still immensely talented, and though some key cogs are quickly falling due to age (Wheeler, Little, Perreault), I would argue that in the past season and potentially the next, the bigger problem is a lineup that is not able to outscore the opposition for the entire duration of 60 minutes. The last season specifically, it was certainly a curious case of 'sticking to your guns'.

The Jets are now in an awkward phase where the majority of their good and expensive players are now their forwards rather than their defense. Rather than going to a now-barren market of defensemen in which only Gardiner might provide actual value above replacement or average, the likes of Niku and Poolman (and potentially Stanley and Pionk) will need to be challenged to fill the void.

I am sure not many Jets fans are excited to hear the idea that the team needs to inject yet more youth that are in dire need of NHL experience while 'the window is open', but the reality is that the Jets actually managed to do some addition by subtraction in not having Myers, Chiarot, and Tanev return to the team - the only issue now is not giving Maurice their replacements to overplay and misuse as he has done before to allow for these rookies to prove they can be better.

After all - the day that NHL teams prefer to play young players who might be bad instead of old players who are definitely bad will be a beautiful day.


The purpose of this very, very long form piece of writing was to surmise my thoughts on the 2018-19 Jets' season, the current events of the off-season, and my worries going into the next season. My current catalogue of thoughts had been in several locations across the internet, be it forum posts or Tweets (or direct messages), and I had wanted to put it altogether in a new light. Over 3,500 words is likely not a standard post I would make if I were to continue this for the future, but I wanted to have this as a base to any future works I might do and allow for more discussions.

And besides, I think the Jets need more people to ruffle their feathers.