Three Scenarios for the Future of the Winnipeg Jets

Much has already been said, written, theorized, and fantasized about this offseason for the Winnipeg Jets Hockey Club. After a season that can only be described as falling flat on one’s face after last offseason’s perceived promise, fans have once again opined this Summer as the most important Summer of Kevin Cheveldayoff’s tenure as General Manager, prompted mostly by the allure of the available established NHL coaches – headlined by none other than near-hometown kid, Barry Trotz.

Hiring a Head Coach, however, is merely but one step in putting together a team that ideally competes for the Stanley Cup in any given season. That being said, uniquely for the Jets is the idea of how this particular vacancy will be filled – at least, in this author’s opinion – will undoubtedly influence the direction of the Hockey Club for the next 5 years, both in terms of the Hockey Operations personnel (of which I’ve written about before) and the composition of the roster.

Which option will the Winnipeg Jets go with – or, which option will be imposed on the Hockey Club despite their efforts? With the Stanley Cup Finals now underway, we may not know around July 1st, so in the meantime, let’s theorize. 

Scenario #1: Jets Hire Barry Trotz; Compete Now for 2 Years

Barry Trotz turning down coaching opportunities with the likes of Vegas, Philadelphia, and Detroit (and maybe Florida?) and forgoing a potential management opportunity in Nashville to be the Head Coach of the Winnipeg Jets would be undoubtedly the biggest vote of confidence that this Hockey Club and the majority of the players on its roster could get. Coming after a grueling Canadian-only division in 2021 (grueling referring to the lack of getting out of Winnipeg and Canada) and then having their Head Coach publicly quit on them in the following season as their shooting luck dried up, the news of an experienced and Stanley Cup winning Head Coach accepting the position may be the shot-in-the-arm this team needs to get back to the expectations thrusted upon them after their best season in 2017-18.

During the 2021-22 season, many players wondered aloud just what the “identity” of the Jets was. For those of us without an inside view, we could only guess based on how they played: creative offensively based on their talent alone, while struggling defensively with mixed understandings of positioning carried by an outstanding goaltender. But when you start to have the players inside the room openly question just exactly how and why they were getting to those results – you have problems.

The New York Islanders were facing a similar issue in the 2018 offseason – their captain, John Tavares, had left the team in quite the dramatic fashion for greener pastures in Toronto, after not having made in the playoffs with New York in the previous two seasons. Lou Lamoriello was only with the organization for a month, and Barry Trotz only a day, before Tavares had made the decision to sign with his childhood team. They also faced an upcoming season where they would split home games between two arenas, as their new arena plans were still in planning stages. There were a ton of unknowns for the team – but, Trotz latched onto the arising talent defensively and got some superb goaltending along the way, and established a culture and a game where the Islanders as a 5-man unit could grind the game the way they wanted to. After being expected to be a bottom-feeder team, they made the playoffs in 2018-19 and then two subsequent conference finals in 2019-21, before not qualifying this past season – where Lamoriello decided the team needed a new voice (or at the very least, could not let Lane Lambert go).

If Trotz were to join the Jets, he would at least have one of those components: outstanding goaltending, thanks to Connor Hellebuyck – if he can rebound to his 2019-21 form and not 2021-22. While the blueline is comprised of many NHL veterans, none of them are truly remarkable as a unit – the team’s total Defensive xGAR from 2019-22 was a dreadful -18.2, second last amongst all NHL teams. (NYI was 17th in that same time frame with 56, mostly from an impressive 23.7 EVD xGAR.) Many fans are hoping that the coaching style from Trotz could turn this around in dramatic fashion: after having watched Paul Maurice and Charlie Huddy struggle to implement some form of a hybrid man-to-man or high 3F in the offensive zone to minimize chances, Trotz could bring similar adjustments he made to the Islander’s 1-1-3 neutral zone formation to the Jets (whom also have some form of that 1-1-3), with forecheckers smothering puck carriers in the OZ or coming across the defensive blueline – something that the Jets gave up rather freely since the departure of Dustin Byfuglien. That being said, Trotz may not have the luxury of being able to immediately insert and trust three 24-year-olds into heavy minutes like he did in Pulock, Pelech, and Toews – unless he surprises us all with more minutes provided to the likes of Samberg (23), Chisholm (22), and Heinola (21) instead of Dillon (32), Schmidt (31), and Stanley (24).

Yet, amidst all of that, there is a familiarity to it all: to try to be defensively sound and let the chips fall where they may offensively through exceptional talent. And while the offensive talent of Mark Scheifele, Nikolaj Ehlers, and Kyle Connor may not need much “coaching” in the offensive end of the ice (as previous coaches theorized) and that a more sound defensive game may finally bring a full 200ft game that fans and management have been hoping to see again, the success of a Trotz system relies on all five players in a 5-man unit to pressure the opposing puck carrier to force battles and turnovers, something that 55, 81, and 27 have not historically done much of. It is also not ideal for young up-and-comers like Cole Perfetti, Pierre-Luc Dubois, Morgan Barron, and whomever they may draft in the upcoming 2022 NHL Draft to model their games after what we have seen from the Jets top offensive players these past few seasons. In other words, getting the buy-in from the Jets top forwards to be significantly more aggressive in all zones is critical both for the immediate and long-term future.

As such, there exists two problems: the first is that in Trotz’s past teams, Lane Lambert would have assumed the responsibility of taking care of the forwards, in addition to the penalty kill. With Lambert staying on the Island, it is heavily assumed (for the moment) that Scott Arniel would assume those responsibilities, coming over from the Washington Capitals, trying to incorporate that style of a heavy grind and puck retrieval aspect to the forwards games. When it comes to the penalty kill, Arniel does get some pretty decently league average results. However, the Capitals left a lot on the table offensively after Trotz had left by openly avoiding getting to the crease – perhaps a combination of the lack of motivation after finally having been successful in winning the Stanley Cup, and the lack of successfully graduating forward prospects outside of Vrana, Sprong, and Burakovsky, all three of whom have arguably not met their offensive ceilings when originally drafted. All the way back when he had autonomy over everything in Columbus shows a lack of urgency in getting to the front of the net in the offensive zone as well. That does not necessarily bode well already in terms of adding an element of aggression to the current style of the Jets top forwards.

The second problem is the absolutely bare cupboards of offensive forward talent that the Jets have available to them today, and the likelihood of Trotz continuing a top 6 / bot 6 deployment in favour of his veterans. There once was a time where Adam Lowry created offence for his team as much as he shut down it down for his opponents, and having a speedy winger like Tanev or Appleton on his wing alongside a versatile forward in Copp allowed for a tilted percentage in favour of most metrics. That has almost completely disappeared in the last three years, and the fourth line has been… well, they have mostly just existed with the Jets, to put it bluntly. While watching the Avalanche and Lightning throw line after line at each other in the Stanley Cup Finals, the obvious lack of depth for the Winnipeg Jets becomes rather apparent, especially now after Kristian Vesalainen’s upcoming departure, having not even meeting his perceived floor (of which I put blame equally on the player (attitude) and the organization (attempting to mould his game into a power forward and subsequently losing his shot) for this failed development). Trotz may be able to get a lot out of a 12-forward group that is more top-heavy as seen in his past success in Washington and New York, but Cheveldayoff may have much more additional work to do this offseason than simply hiring a Head Coach and extending a few RFAs.

One elements of a potential solution to these problems is to simply look down the hallway at the success of the Manitoba Moose with Marty Johnson coaching their forwards, and maybe flip through a few of the old playbooks left behind by Todd Woodcroft (now with Vermont). Both schemes fit a bit of the mould that Trotz typically employs – a full 5-man unit style, but in the offensive zone. The 2021-22 Moose controlled the puck often and had their forwards relentlessly grind on the forecheck to allow their talented blueline to carry the momentum – but, even though forwards got their chances in high-danger areas, the lack of finishing talent haunted them in the first round of the Calder Cup Playoffs against some pretty good goaltending in Milwaukee.

The next is addressing the lack of forward depth, of which Cheveldayoff and his Hockey Operations staff need to do a much better job of to help re-open this window within the next two years. Since signing Kyle Connor and Patrik Laine to their second contracts in 2019, the Jets have arguably only brought in one UFA forward that has positively contributed to the team: Evgeny Svechnikov (xGAR of 3.6 in 2021-22). In his limited minutes, you may consider Kristian Reichel as having a decent shot to being a slightly positive contributor in the future – but the likes of Austin Poganski, Riley Nash, Dominic Toninato, Trevor Lewis, etc., simply do not match to the signing depth we see from teams like Tampa Bay or Colorado. (Go back simply a year and you may consider forwards like Gabriel Bourque, Mark Letestu, Seth Griffith, and Logan Shaw duds as well.) ((And don’t even get me started on the defencemen signings.)) In order to find value in the future like Svechnikov (instead of completely missing on the eight names mentioned above), the Hockey Club must invest whatever little budget they have remaining in an Analytics team that can effectively partner with their Pro Scouts to find this type of value.

Perhaps glancing at these obvious acquisition misses makes the argument for Trotz’s control over the roster in the immediate short-term instead of only when his coaching days are over, as Jeff Hamilton recently alluded to on Winnipeg Sports Talk. If True North’s goal is to compete now and achieves the first part of that in being able to have Barry Trotz be their Head Coach, then Barry Trotz indeed deserves a significant say in the construction of the roster that suits the strengths of his system, instead of relying on their forwards’ shooting talent and goaltending talent to simply “get in” and hope for the best. That being said: we have certainly seen how the last few years went where it was rather apparent in which players and prospects were brought in to play by the Head Coach at the time versus the General Manager – contrary to that thought is that this “rift” happens all the time, as I’ve written about before during the Heinola Wars.

At the end of the day, I’ll refer back to the second element of solving the Jets depth problem under Trotz by surmising it with another article: “Data May Not Drive Play, But It Should Drive Decisions”. It is unlikely that a Trotz’s hiring will make him the sole person responsible for sending away or acquiring players for the team, and that Cheveldayoff and his Assistant General Managers and Pro Scouts will all still have a role to play in helping construct the ideal Trotz team. But it will be critical for them to avoid the BOGSAT Model: “Bunch Of Guys Sitting Around Talking” – and to do so, it will require further investments and a better alignment of their Hockey Operations than they currently have. It takes all three elements of Domain Knowledge, Data Science & Analysis, and Visualization & Communications to drive actionable insights communicated in ways that decision-makers understand – if the Jets only have one or two of the three, then they will continue to be likely in missing out in their ultimate goal of winning the Stanley Cup in the “Compete Now” years.

Scenario #2: Jets Hire Second Best Option and Undergo Retooling

Perhaps Barry Trotz is enticed by another team or decides to take a year off or go into management. Without a longer-tenured “established” NHL name available (with the likes of Bruce Cassidy going to Vegas and Tortorella going to Philadelphia), Jets are likely to look at their Tier 2 and Tier 3 options, including the likes of Claude Julien (most recently with MTL and Team Canada), Jim Montgomery (STL), Pascal Vincent (CBJ), Kirk Muller (CGY), Derek Lalonde (TBL), Spencer Carbery (TOR), Rick Tocchet (most recently with ARI), Pete DeBoer (most recently with VGK), or Rick Bowness (most recently with DAL).

The mix of names seen here are a combination of both longevity or newness in the NHL, which is why I’ve slotted it here in the middle as Scenario #2, in where I would argue that the Jets should undergo a minor retooling not unlike what they did in the 2021 offseason. The reason being: with some promise of longevity from a coach that is longer than one or two years, the Club should focus on their next best chance and not try to force it where it may not exist – and fix the locker room as part of the process to do so.

It is no secret that the Jets locker room has been in a state of disarray since Byfuglien’s surprise-but-not-really-a-surprise retirement in 2019 – unless you ask the most jovial of teammates, if I were to point to the contrary. However, with Scheifele openly taking shots at the media in one offseason and guessing about his commitment to the team the next, and Hellebuyck only happy here so long as the team promises to compete, many fans’ brows were furrowed and a nervous sweat began to drip across their faces.

Never mind how a new Head Coach may feel about the aspect of the team’s two best players second-guessing how long they will stay with the team, as they try to take a position and have some modicum of success in it to ensure they get NHL paycheques for the rest of their foreseeable future – how will this impact the length of the contract of one Pierre Luc-Dubois this offseason, the desirability of UFAs to sign with Winnipeg for the next two, and the potential departure of a Vezina-calibre goaltender in only two more seasons without a noteworthy prospect to take his stead? If the Jets go with their second-best candidate (who will obviously know that they were considered second-best to Trotz), Cheveldayoff needs to have free rein in order to “fix” the locker room so the new Head Coach can establish a system and culture that will last longer than the Scheifele-Wheeler-Hellebuyck window. And that likely means having to explore and ultimately trading Mark Scheifele.

Similar to how I theorized that Trotz has the best shot at fixing the “identity” of the Jets with the majority of the roster intact in order to go for it, trading Scheifele is the best option for fixing the culture in the short span of a few months leading up to the next season in order to at least try building a team and its culture for the years following it. Essentially – instead of the Scheifele-Wheeler-Hellebuyck window, you’re trying to build the Ehlers-Connor-Morrissey window, and convincing Dubois and Hellebuyck that those are worthwhile windows to stay for.

The tough part? I have often said that the best culture in sports is simply winning more than you are losing. But having watched the Winnipeg Jets implode from within since January 2019, it is clear that something is poisoning the well and that players (outside of a select few) do not feel they get the opportunity they have earned in order to cement a regular spot in a NHL lineup – nor do they feel that they are developing in a satisfactory manner and subsequently has them exploring other opportunities in different farm teams across the league. Just take it from Paul Stastny: 

“We've got to be held accountable, whether it's player on player, and we've got to have more respect for each other. When you don't have that, when you don't care about the teammate next to you, potentially, and you just care about what you're doing or certain individual things, that starts bleeding into the game.” 

It was not directly pointing fingers, but when Scheifele comments at the end of the season is on “[having] to think about my career and what’s going to be best for [himself]” and talking with his “agents and everyone in [his] family and stuff like that and figure out what [he] really want[s]”, there’s a noticeable lack of mention or reference to a team camaraderie. It is not to say it is impossible to find again, but after his friends in Michael Hutchinson, Jacob Trouba, and Andrew Copp have departed, the reasons for Scheifele wanting to stay in Winnipeg grow increasingly slim.

A hypothetical Scheifele trade could garner some prospects or draft assets that can be used to turnaround the team after the Wheeler contract expires, which also frees up considerable room for players that may be looking for a new contract at or around that time – pair that with the likelihood of the salary cap increasing in moderate amounts after having been flat for the past few years, you could risk the chance to persuade Dubois to a bridge deal until then and sign him to a longer contract in the 2024 offseason when the Jets have considerably more space to afford a longer and more expensive contract his agent is likely demanding today.

Whatever money you save from not hitting the salary cap in the next two years (and not signing Trotz to a rumoured contract of over $7,000,000 (if Jets were to come close to PHI’s offer)) must be allocated towards fleshing out a Player Development function within Hockey Operations. No offence to True North favourites Mike Keane and Jimmy Roy, but it gets harder and harder to ignore how teams like Tampa Bay and Toronto continue to plug in their prospects in elevated roles and have success in doing so, while their journalists cover how said prospects refine their skills (or how their elite players becoming even better) by working with coaches like Barb Underhill for their skating or Darryl Belfry for their wrist shot in order to meet expectations in those roles.

For the Jets, it seems like a never-ending carousel of players going through the school of Adam Oates – who, if I may remind our readers, isn’t a fan of the Michigan because “you’ve lost perspective of the other guys on the ice right in front of you. You might have a teammate open that you could have fed a backhand pass to.” Yet while Oates’ clients like Scheifele, Copp, Morrissey, and Wheeler have increased their point totals, earning themselves a decent payday or priming themselves for their next contract, the team itself has yet to reap any sort of collective benefit.

It has always been the opinion of this author that if True North truly sees themselves as “a preeminent organization within the National Hockey League” and “developing championship caliber hockey teams”, a rather barebones Hockey Operations department that results in its Hockey Clubs’ players and prospects continually seeking external coaching both during and outside of the season means that TNSE has failed at their vision and mission, and thus it should be no surprise that their 2020-22 seasons have been abject failures because of the absence of these types of support and services roles. Amidst the current market where nearly half of the league is simply rotating through Head Coaches amongst one another (the Winnipeg Jets likely included) while the two current Stanley Cup Finalists were previously AHL Head Coaches with their respective clubs and are now two of the top three longest tenured coaches with their current teams, many people such as Justin Bourne begin to wonder about the return on investment of simply hiring a retread – even previous Hockey Operations staffer, Jack Han, compares spending money exclusively on a Head Coach without investing elsewhere in the department as “putting the best engine in a car with old breaks.”

Missing out on Barry Trotz could potentially end up being better for the Winnipeg Jets in the long-run, provided they can use the remainder of their allotted budget for an expensive Trotz contract elsewhere in the organization if they truly want to compete in the next two years – so long as they clean up the other existing messes before a newer coach steps into the locker room. But if the search goes totally awry, then Cheveldayoff and Chipman are left with only one truth: embracing a full and complete rebuild.

Scenario #3: Jets Are Left at the Altar; Completely Rebuild

Now, I’m not saying seeing Scott Arniel’s name as the next Head Coach of the Winnipeg Jets is undoubtedly a bad thing – as I mentioned before, Arniel may have been left out to dry in his first foray at Columbus – but for all the names that were available this Summer and to be left with someone who was not even connected to any other team’s Head Coach opening is somewhat rather indicative of everyone else’s perception of this team’s ability to compete in the immediate future. In this scenario, Cheveldayoff and Chipman will have to face the writing on the wall and come to grips with the idea that this team simply is not good enough now, and has not been good enough in recent history to even argue against that notion.

Let’s quickly recap just how the last few years have gone – namely, after the 2018-19 post-season where it was first rumoured that Cheveldayoff wanted to let Paul Maurice go then-and-there, only for Chipman to deny it and announce an extension himself at the Winnipeg Jets Hall of Fame Luncheon in February 2020, right after the team itself endured a terrible January in terms of xG against and goals per xG for. The Jets had found themselves .001% below Calgary in terms of points percentage right as the COVID pause began as they tried to get themselves into a playoff spot, and ended up facing the Flames in the Qualifying Round. With notable injuries to Mark Scheifele and Patrik Laine, Jets could not get many past Cam Talbot – but Wheeler was nevertheless “proud [but] very disappointed that we just couldn't catch a break.” The 2020-21 season was also COVID impacted, facing off against Canadian teams only, in where the Jets shooting was still deadly but the saving was continuing to cover most of their flaws – especially in the subsequent sweep of the Edmonton Oilers in where Hellebuyck saved nearly two-times as many goals as expected. Hellebuyck still performed somewhat admirably in the following series, but the Jets supposed “deadly” offence was anything but as they got swept, with Scheifele acting somewhat like a petulant child on the way out.

Mere months after the 2021-22 season began and after Murat Ates wrote about Mark Chipman admiring and valuing Maurice’s longevity with the Jets, the Jets Head Coach took matters upon himself and resigned from the Club citing that the team needed “a new voice”. Unfortunately, Dave Lowry was not the new voice the hockey club needed, as the Jets shooting and saving luck had dried up, even after having an extended pause in December to incorporate some of his systems and ideas (then again, I always theorized that the remainder of the Jets coaching staff was simply coaching by committee after Maurice’s departure rather than just Dave Lowry’s ideas). And then there’s all the talk about the locker room culture mentioned in the previous scenario – do we really think yet another True North hire like Scott Arniel can turnaround all of these faults into a contender?

At this point, it is better to embrace the tank and to completely rebuild the team and find the next Winnipeg Jets core. It is not an ideal situation to essentially have to skip over what could be considered the best years of Dubois, Ehlers, Connor, and Hellebuyck, but realistically they will not be able to carry the rest of a mediocre team while stunting the development of what should be the beginning parts of the next core: Perfetti, Gustafsson, Heinola, and Chisholm. But even looking at those names alone, I would argue that none of these current Jets prospects have that elite-level talent that makes good teams into great teams.

Luckily for a completely rebuilding Jets team, the 2023 NHL Draft does. A year-and-a-half ahead of that draft, Scott Wheeler of the Athletic has already written that this group is “arguably the most exciting group of talent [he’s] watched in [the last] decade” with the plethora of forward talent that is available. Connor Bedard at 16-years-old had a literal historic season in the WHL, putting up numbers that nearly come close to McDavid’s in the more offensive OHL. Matvei Michkov has been written about as one of the top goal scorers already, although questions surround just how long he will remain in Russia. Adam Fantilli at 16-years-old had a historic season of his own in what some call an underrated development league (USHL). And that’s only the top three – the accolades continue for many other prospects in the top 10 that could have probably been considered top 3 in any other year after the 2016 NHL Draft. In other words, the Jets should strive to get into the 2023’s Top 3 as best as possible – and garner even more assets in the draft, almost akin to the Arizona Coyote’s haul with seven draft picks in the first two rounds – in order to get the “lottery tickets” they need to begin building a cup contending team again.

Unfortunately, trying to garner those assets leads into the aforementioned skip of the next core. The likes of Scheifele, Hellebuyck, Dubois, Ehlers, and maybe Kyle Connor would undoubtedly return both high picks at the Trade Deadline and at the 2023 NHL Draft for teams looking to go all-in (akin to what the Jets may do if they go all-in when hiring Trotz at this year’s draft). Besides: the Jets sucking for the next 3-5 years will probably be better in the long-run to avoid the Colorado Avalanche steamrolling the Central Division in that same timespan. While this may not be ideal for True North’s revenues as they look to recover from the COVID years and miss out on that sweet, sweet Playoff Street Party cash, the lucky part they can reconcile with is that (most) of their fans are smart hockey fans (maybe, arguably), and could tough out a few years of poor results in order to have a turnaround akin to the Colorado Avalanche.

And though they may not have much in terms of revenue – think about the money they would save in terms of the costs of contracts to at least get to the salary floor! With that available budget, they should leave no stone unturned when it comes to building out a proper Hockey Operations department that actually makes them world class: player development, professional analytics, amateur analytics, skills coaching, strength and high-performance, et cetera. Build up the players you do have in their elevated minutes for exposure to be traded for assets – make agents tell their clients that Winnipeg is desirable both in the short-term and long-term: short-term in that players can come here and play in all sorts of minutes where they otherwise would have been blocked on the depth chart on mediocre teams in order to become attractive to contending teams and realize a payday later, and long-term for players entering UFAs to be recommended Winnipeg as a destination because of the growth and development and (hopefully) that they are about to enter their competing window on cheap ELCs that means more money for them. Win-win-win, as they say.

There is probably an argument to be made that the Jets should enter this phase now, rather than the song-and-dance that is currently occurring with Trotz and trying to extend a window that has all but slammed shut, no matter how good Connor Hellebuyck is in any given season. I would probably agree, given that the Jets have mostly “fumbled the bag” as they say for the past three seasons, stalling development of key prospects while relying on unsustainable percentages to get to where they were while pretending it was a part of the master plan all along. While I will always give credit to Paul Maurice for maturing True North from an AHL roster and club into an NHL one, True North has lagged behind other hockey clubs within the past five years in developing a modern roster – even though it seems as if the General Manager and Amateur Scouts have been trying to pull in that direction, other influences within (or outside) Hockey Operations have pulled in the opposite in favour of longevity of trust in those in the organization who have been here the longest.

Safe to say, it is extremely unlikely that the Jets go in this direction, unless current negotiations with Trotz goes completely awry in where current management does not want to relinquish any control over roster decisions to a Head Coach only in that role for the short-term – but even then, the likelihood of the Jets going with an Arniel-type and trying to stay competitive even though history has shown they have been anything but is… well, all too likely. Not to mention, the race to the bottom for the chance to get one of Bedard or Michkov or the wealth of forwards in the 2023 NHL Draft will undoubtedly be at levels not seen since Buffalo or Arizona in their chase for McDavid and Eichel (and Matthews). Alas, one can only dream.

Closing Thoughts

After reading through roughly 5,000 words already, I hope you are seeing a central theme to these three scenarios I have outlined above for the Jets to potentially see success in any of them. Mike McIntyre tried his hand at this by outlining the decisions that need to be made on Scheifele, Dubois, prospects, and free agent frenzy – but really, the Jets and True North should take one gigantic step back and evaluate their Hockey Operations as a whole and figure out their short- and long-term strategy, and what type of personnel and staff they need in their organization to carry out that mission and vision.

The JetsMedia.ca webpage hasn’t updated their staff directory in forever (it still has Paul Maurice as their Head Coach), but describing their Hockey Operations portfolio as "lean" would be considerably too kind. While some leaders (and no doubt some readers in people leader positions) undoubtedly want to avoid a bloated structure with multiple hierarchies of leaders making decisions, the problem is that a hierarchy barely exists today within the current Jets structure. Whatever is left of the Research & Analysis team hardly appears to have had any sort of say in the Jets recent acquisitions or lineup chemistry (who among that team would have recommended Riley Nash to be inserted on the first power play unit?). Player development has stalled for some players, leading to departures for others because of frustrations dealing with the previous coaching staff assuming some of those responsibilities, while many others have gone to other sources, which mostly influence their individual interests – not the team’s. The difference between Pro Scouts and Amateur Scouts based on who is drafted and who is acquired (or passed over) on waivers is astoundingly frustrating with the clear difference in valuing skill or size, and whether the other can be taught or influenced in play.

People may read this rambling and summarize it as “Chief is just arguing for True North to hire more analytics people”, but honestly, it really is time to stop talking about analytics. What the Jets need to get better at is making decisions at every level, and that such decisions are consistent with the mission and vision of the organization and the hockey club, which means they must (if I may steal from @petbugs13 again):

1. Have a clear objective in mind;
2. Identify all available options;
3. Evaluate them against each other; and
4. Decide.

The problem today is that from this point-of-view, I find it extremely hard to make a case that absolutely everyone in the current Jets Hockey Operations is pulling in one direction – again, not a bad thing in some scenarios where people within the organization “fight” for what they believe in. But is what they are fighting for part of the greater objective of the organization, or are they merely arguing for what they feel strongly about and doesn’t fit into the bigger picture? Are there appropriate measures, performance indicators, and evaluations in place, so there can be accountability and course-corrections when and where necessary? Or is it all just a Bunch Of Guys Sitting Around Talking and getting paid big money to do so?

The Winnipeg Jets Hockey Club is at a key turning point where transformation is not only being thrust upon them by the immediate decisions they have to make with regards to their next Head Coach – it is necessary in order to keep up with other teams. And, if implemented appropriately with context for the city and organization’s shortcomings, they may be able to further take advantage of other untapped inefficiencies within the league in order to perform at a consistently high level.

Whoever the Jets hire at Head Coach will be viewed as the key point for the direction of this hockey club to many. In my perspective, while it will influence their approach to one of three ways, what they do before, during, and after – in both the composition of the roster and the employment of those in its Hockey Operations – will be the determining factors of this club’s ability to compete for a Stanley Cup.