Are the Jets Building for the Future?

Yesterday we had a
terrific article by
Dave Wheeler from Wheeler In the Morning about
the Jets making strides over the past three seasons. No doubt, a 10th place
finish in the West is better than a 10th place finish in the Southeast, and the
Jets logged more travel miles this season than in their first thanks
to the geographic spread of Western cities. The circumstances are harder, so
running in place is actually a sign of improvement.

The Atlanta expansion franchise fizzed and popped and never got
on track. The Architect of Shame Don Waddell escaped the “World’s
Worst” levels of criticism heaped on men like Doug MacLean, Mike Milbury,
and Steve Tambellini, perhaps owing to the star power he found along the
way or the general irrelevance of hockey in Georgia to those outside the
American South-East.

In either case, after the team sobered up from taking Patrick
Stefan 1st overall in their inaugural draft, Marcel Comeau was appointed Director
of Scouting in 2003 and remains at the post to this day. Sadly for us, in
Arrested Development terms, he’s a hot mess at his job. Between 2003 and 2010
(8 drafts), he graduated two players to the NHL of his 54
selections after 12th overall. You know, the back 200+ picks of the
draft. Those players are Enstrom and Pavelec, so I’m inclined to call it one.

The team made the playoffs once in all their Atlanta years on
the sweat of Hossa, Kovalchuk, Kozlov, Tkachuk (added at the deadline) and
Kari Lehtonen, and were swept in the first round despite having home ice
advantage from their Division title that season.

The point is, it’s not
the first time this team has had high-end talent.

Despite my early nausea at Trouba’s play resembling the
excitement of a puppy, he has carried the team’s worst defender and
contributed a great deal to an off-balance defence group. Scheifele found some
rhythm in December after a tough start that inspired the #ScheifeleDown hashtag
and invited many to suggest he should get some AHL seasoning.

But what does that depth chart look like? In a perfect world
where no one loses their way and no one is injured or hits a ceiling in their
development, it might be something like:

It’s silly to imagine all those players making the NHL, never
mind all being difference makers. But even if they did and were everything
we could imagine, is that team better than the one the Jets have now? Missing
three tough-minutes forwards in Ladd, Little, and Frolik, the offence of Blake
Wheeler and Dustin Byfuglien, and perhaps the smartest player to wear Polar
Night Blues in Tobias Enstrom – are the Jets better off?

The truth about the Winnipeg Jets is that they have a handful of
extremely rare, high-end players in their primes. For all the turnover talk
this season regarding Dustin Byfuglien, no teams not named Ottawa or Pittsburgh
can claim to have a defenceman who creates as much offence (and neither of
their guys are built like a tractor). Ladd, Little, and Frolik (and LLW before
it) are a power-vs-power line that keeps up with the stars of some of the
league’s best teams. Evander Kane is in the top 5% of NHL goal scorers at a
young age with little help. And everyone who plays with Tobi Enstrom gets
better.

For three straight years, the problems have been outside that
top group. Sure, it would be great if Crosby came in and made Little the second
line centre. More realistically, the team needed to acquire a scoring centre
that wasn’t playing little known Finnish games like ‘Fumble Puck’ and ‘Stay
Away, Get Away’ while his team mates were playing hockey. We know how
inexpensive those can be, with Grabovski and Jussi Jokinen passing
through waivers, and Kyle Wellwood retiring for lack of league
interest. With Scheifele stepping up, the need becomes more of a checking
or two-way centre. We had one move to Russia recently over the coach that got
fired and the Fumble Puck world champion himself.

The team has shown that when they shorten the bench, they become
very competitive against the league’s best. Claude Noel did it early in the
season to stem the bleeding. So there is an obvious course of action. Step one,
stop playing the stick-optional players. Step two, change our expectations for
that end of the lineup from ‘doesn’t bring us shame’ to ‘gets the puck in the
right end of the rink.’ Step three, find more effective hockey players who can
live up to that expectation.

The same problem exists on the blue line, where team has
Enstrom, Bogosian, Trouba, and (I would argue, your mileage may vary) Byfuglien
as defenders who can get the puck moving the right way. But Bogo, Trouba, and
Buf all need to play with Enstrom to be at their best. Pardy and Ellerby have
been remarkable, but mostly in light of the extremely low expectations of
players cast away from Dallas and Florida. Mark Stuart is a very real problem
on the ice, no matter how good he is in the locker room. For all the belly
aching last year, the team actually misses Ron Hainsey.

Of course, all of it might be forgiven if the team had a league
average netminder between the pipes. Again, the Jets don’t need Carey Price in
order to make the playoffs – three years running they just needed
a Braydon Holtby! Peter Budaj and Justin Peters could have done the
job. James Reimer, for all the vitriol spewed, has substantially
better numbers than Pavelec behind an even worse defence structure this
year. And his career numbers? It’s depressing how much better they are than the
crease sweeper currently employed by this club.

The frustrating part of being a Jets fan at this time of year is
knowing how much better they could be for almost no effort on the part of the
GM. 

Play Montoya and Hutchinson and literally Save money while
making more saves. Those kinds of goalies are not hockey messiahs
– they come in six-packs available in August and September every year.

Try out Carl Klingberg (who leads our AHL forwards in +/- has
size and speed) and Andrew Gordon (a Washington Capital grinder turned leading
IceCaps scorer) in those bottom four forward spots the team has struggled to
fill. Telegin and Burmistrov could very obviously make a positive impact on
this team, perhaps even forming most of a third line as early as next season.

As a Jets fan and “analyst” (I’m not more comfortable writing it
than you are reading it), it often feels like getting better is largely a
matter of addition by subtraction. There are existing answers in-house now,
without waiting years to find out what Nic Petan and Andrew Copp can do.

The best teams – like Pittsburgh and Detroit and Chicago – can draft
and develop talent while being competitive at the top levels. That’s sustainable
success. The problem teams like Atlanta had or have stems from the belief that a
team has to draft 23 NHL quality players and wait a generation for them to
become a team.

The Jets have a ton of high-1st round picks already
in the lineup and who are now in their primes. It’s time to patch up the holes
and compete now – and that doesn’t mean compromising the future.