Winnipeg Jets’ top prospects ETA? Making changes on defence? Mailbag

The Winnipeg Jets are struggling horribly on special teams and Connor Hellebuyck’s numbers are worse than at any point in recent memory. Special teams have cost Winnipeg multiple times on the way to a 4-4-2 record.

Thursday night’s 5-2 loss to the Golden Knights is the most recent casualty of Jets special teams, with Winnipeg going 1-for-5 on the power play while giving up two goals on Mason Appleton’s double-minor for high-sticking in the second period. It was enough to negate Kyle Connor’s spectacular backhand rush goal and dig Winnipeg into a hole from which it could not recover.

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The numbers are stunning: 12.8 percent on the power play, 69.4 percent on the PK, and somehow the Jets are still a good team at five-on-five. Give them credit for a fast, aggressive five-on-five forecheck led by Adam Lowry, Nino Niederreiter and Appleton. Give them credit for Mark Scheifele’s quality start to the season, for unheralded players like Alex Iafallo and Brenden Dillon making goal-saving plays in the crease. It’s all kinds of tough to win with bottom-tier special teams or a sub-.900 save percentage, though.

For Part 1 of this month’s two-part mailbag, Jets fans wanted to dig into some big-picture questions.

Long-term planning for top prospects like October’s NCAA co-player of the month Rutger McGroarty and Moose leading scorer Brad Lambert was fun while upgrading the Jets’ defence corps to contending status proved to be a bit of a challenge.

There was also a question about Nikolaj Ehlers and Cole Perfetti that went in a surprisingly negative direction.

Note: Submitted questions may be edited for clarity and style.

Is Mark Scheifele playing a better two-way game? By eye test, he seems to be, but would love your great reviews with analytics and clips! — Glen L.

Yes. Give me a 20-game sample and I’ll give you the deep dive you deserve. Until then, my view is that Scheifele is tracking back hard and winning most of his battles low in the Jets zone.

He still gets beat from time to time but my view is that Scheifele’s been a solid 200-foot player this season. His linemates have struggled at key times, though: Connor has struggled in coverage and at getting the puck safely out of the zone. Consider Connor’s stunning/gorgeous/perfect backhand goal in the second period against Vegas. The Jets got a goal, Scheifele and Iafallo got assists, and rewind the tape just a bit and it’s Scheifele recovering a Vegas missed shot and protecting the puck. Rewind a bit further and you see Vegas got its shot because Connor couldn’t get the puck out at the Jets blue line — something he’s struggled with quite a bit this season.

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I don’t think Scheifele has been so good as to be dominant and there are still moments where he gets beat by his man. I do think he’s been in the fight, so to speak, more often than not and has earned a bit of praise on this front. We’ll see how long that lasts and what the numbers look like when the sample grows big enough for a proper dive.

Which of the top five forward prospects (Chaz Lucius, Rutger McGroarty, Brad Lambert, Colby Barlow, Nikita Chibrikov) do you think will be the first to play in an NHL game? — Aavcocup A.

This is a fun question. The answer obviously depends on the quality of season(s) that each player puts together between now and the day they make their NHL debut. Part of it depends on which league they’re playing in right now.

On first glance, it seems unlikely that Colby Barlow (OHL) or McGroarty (NCAA) win this race. Barlow is the youngest of the group and is up to seven goals and five assists in 11 games but he isn’t eligible for a call-up until his junior season ends. McGroarty is off to a scorching hot start to his sophomore season for the University of Michigan, scoring 15 points in his first eight games and was named co-player of the month for the NCAA in October.

If Michigan won the national championship this year and McGroarty kept up his current rate of production, it would be easy to imagine him leaving college after two years. If he exits this season with unfinished NCAA business, including his own continued development, then a third year is the likely play.

That makes me circle back to Lambert, Nikita Chibrikov and Chaz Lucius who have all signed their ELCs and are playing for Manitoba. Lucius has had the least explosive start to his AHL season, suffered a concussion on Oct. 22, and is skating with the Moose in a non-contact capacity. Lambert has jumped out to a four-goal, five-assist, nine-point start in his first six games, showing the kind of offensive production at his age that projects into a top-six NHL future. Chibrikov’s one goal and seven assists for eight points in those same six games is tracking nearly as well.

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The Jets didn’t panic when Gabriel Vilardi got hurt and call up one of their top prospects before they’d had the chance to prove themselves at the AHL level. If I were the one making the decisions, I’d want to see Lambert and Chibrikov sustain this kind of production for at least half a season before I made an NHL call-up. (And if I’m making the decisions, I choose Chibrikov because I liked the way he battled at camp, taking contact to help the Jets exit the zone.)

I’ll exit with my guess, though: Lambert keeps scoring, posts bigger numbers than Chibrikov, and gets a short call-up before the season is over.

Do you see a scenario where the Jets waive Nate Schmidt to make room in the lineup for younger defencemen? His game seems to have taken a step back early on this season. — Tyler W.

Does Ville Heinola slide right into the lineup (when he’s healthy?) — Glenn C.

If Ville Heinola had stayed healthy and made the team, the Jets would have been forced to choose between waiving Nate Schmidt, Logan Stanley or Declan Chisholm. Schmidt is a 32-year-old third-pairing defenceman with a $5.95 million AAV and who consistently outperforms sheltered minutes. Stanley is 25, has a $1 million AAV and sometimes outperforms sheltered minutes. Chisholm is a 23-year-old defenceman who earns $775,000 and had an elite AHL impact for two straight seasons before making the Jets this year.

On the surface, it’s easy, right? Waive Schmidt or Stanley and keep the cheap, young prospect. The Jets are only one year removed from losing homegrown, right-handed defenceman Johnathan Kovacevic to Montreal, where he plays 19:30 per game to Schmidt’s 16:49 for Winnipeg. Stanley’s 6-foot-7 frame, mobility, and puck skill are intriguing but he’s gotten into a single game, with Schmidt as a healthy scratch.

Here’s what I think would have to happen for Schmidt to be waived:

• Ville Heinola would have to return to full health.
• Schmidt would have to struggle for most of the month or two it takes for Heinola to return.
• The Jets would have to maintain an otherwise healthy group of defencemen (or else the easy answer is one of them goes to IR and Heinola is activated without the Jets waiving anyone).
• The Jets would have to believe Stanley and Chisholm help their chances of winning now more than Schmidt does.

The first one is inevitable. Someday, Heinola will be healthy. The Jets could delay their decision by sending him to the AHL on a short or long-term basis, but he had a great camp and will eventually get back up to speed.

The second strikes me as less likely. Schmidt has a track record of beating third-pairing minutes, he’s lining up with Samberg on a pairing that has dominated shot metrics and which hasn’t experienced a goal against. (Schmidt has been on for goals against in a smaller sample with Brenden Dillon and in one short sequence with Josh Morrissey. Those pairings are unlikely to repeat.)

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If the Jets believed Stanley and Chisholm could help the “win now” concept they’ve announced to the world, then those guys would already be playing. They don’t seem to be in any hurry to work their younger defencemen into a rotation, either.

Finally, the cap savings of waiving Schmidt should be noted. Winnipeg would save only $1.15 million if he cleared waivers — not his full cap hit.

Long-winded, perhaps, but I think my bullet point read of what would have to happen for the Jets to put Schmidt on waivers is close to correct.

Who makes you wince more when they get hit: Nikolaj Ehlers or Cole Perfetti? — Grant B.

I’m not sure if your question comes with an underlying assumption that I’ve missed. Do you like these players? Are you worried about them? Perhaps you maintain an expected level of wincing (xW?) for each Jets player and just want to know how I’ve calibrated my own xW data. If that’s the case, I respect your commitment to working through the statistical concept of “observer bias.” The truth is I don’t wince when either player gets hit.

I will admit one pang of concern, though.

I was conflicted when Andreas Englund hit Perfetti from behind and Perfetti explained that “I thought I had established my numbers.” It’s a situation where being right, like Perfetti was on the play, and being safe, like Perfetti was not, didn’t sound like the same thing. No player should drive another player face-first into the boards, particularly from that distance where injuries seem distinctly possible. The fault is Englund’s. But there is a non-zero number of players who would follow through on that hit, putting Perfetti in danger even if he’s right — and even if a penalty is called.

Most players eliminate their check in that situation by pinning them against the boards. Englund didn’t. He should have been penalized. The idea that he was not penalized, while Samberg got called for the instigator — a penalty that no one ever seems to call — is laughable. But Perfetti was still hit and could have been hurt because he “established his numbers.”

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What players really want is a sense of consistency regarding what is and what isn’t allowed from one shift to the next. If that hit was always called boarding, as it should have been, then fewer players would make the hit that Englund did. That’s a bigger conversation about officiating inconsistency, game management and the very real impact that it has on player health and safety. I think Englund should have been penalized and I also worry about a perspective that assumes people won’t make awful hits. Sometimes, hockey players do make awful hits. So there you have it: my concern.

(Photo of Rutger McGroarty: Roy K. Miller / Icon Sportswire)