Brought in to score some goals and he did just that: Tyler Toffoli Jets Nation year in review

The other man of the hour for today is the other Winnipeg Jets major trade deadline acquisition: Tyler Toffoli. Thanks for joining me back here for another Jets Nation year in review, where I’m looking at each of your Winnipeg Jets. I’ll take a look at their season from 2023-24 and then take a look into the future for the 2024-25 season. Earlier today I talked about the other main acquisition the Jets made this season, Sean Monahan, but now it’s time to talk about the guy who was brought in to score some goals, and did just that: Tyler Toffoli.

Just like the Sean Monahan article, I have to start with the trade that brought Toffoli to Winnipeg from the New Jersey Devils. The Jets traded a 3rd round pick in the 2024 draft and a 2nd round pick in the 2025 draft, an overall pretty solid value trade to acquire Toffoli. Similar to Monahan, Toffoli is in his final year of his contract (which I’ll get into later), and was trying to prove himself to the league before hitting free agency. Before joining the Jets, Toffoli played 61 games with the Devils this season and scored 26 goals and added 18 assists for 44 points.

The recently-turned 32 year old from Scarborough, Ontario is a former 2nd round, 47th overall pick by the Los Angeles Kings in the 2010 NHL entry draft. Toffoli has been a pretty consistent player throughout his career, which began with the Kings for 8 seasons where he hit the 20 goal mark 3 times. After some short stints with the Vancouver Canucks, Montreal Canadiens, Calgary Flames and the Devils, Toffoli finished this season with the Jets. In 18 games, Toffoli scored 7 goals and added 4 assists for 11 points. In the playoffs, Toffoli was just alright, scoring 2 goals in the 5 game 1st round playoff defeat to the divisional rival Colorado Avalanche.

As I’ve mentioned, Toffoli is most known as a goal scoring winger. A stat that jumped out to me this season was that he had a shooting percentage of 14.4%, the 2nd best of his career. His combined 33 goals was just 1 less than his career high of 34 last season with the Flames, and Toffoli set a new career high for powerplay goals with 11. Toffoli has all the skills on offence that a team would need, and he doesn’t appear to be slowing down at all in terms of his production just over halfway into his career. I noticed that Toffoli skates pretty well still, and his shot and drive towards the net is what makes him a valuable player. His two-way game is kind of average, but he all but makes up for it with his high quality scoring ability on the wing, which he showed in his limited time with the Jets this season.

A similar story to Sean Monahan exists when talking about Toffoli. Sure, he had a pretty good season with the Jets, but can or will the Jets extend him to remain a part of the team? Toffoli signed a 4 year, 17 million dollar deal with the Canadiens in 2020, so he’s on the final year of making 4.25 million a year before hitting free agency at age 32. I’ve already talked about some of the many questions that the Jets face this off-season, and one of them is what they do with Toffoli. Most people understand that despite the cost to acquire Toffoli, he was likely just a rental, but it would hurt the Jets to lose both Toffoli and Monahan in free agency this summer.

The only real argument that you can make for the Jets trying to re-sign Toffoli is that it’s hard to replace a 30+ goal scorer. Toffoli’s next contract will likely be in the 2-3 year range, and will probably be a bit of a raise from the 4.25 million he’s making right now. The competition for Toffoli in free agency will be even more than it is for someone like Monahan because of Toffoli’s goal scoring ability. I still think that it’s very likely that Monahan becomes a free agent, but the Jets will probably give it some effort to re-sign Toffoli before they let him walk into free agency in July.

Next season, Toffoli should be able to hit the 30 goal mark once again whether it’s with the Jets or a brand new team. His name was at the top of the trade bait list at the deadline, so it was impressive to see that the Jets were able to go out there and acquire him for a reasonable price. If this is the last we ever see of Toffoli, just like Monahan, we still should respect and appreciate what he was able to accomplish for this Jets team in the 2023-24 season.