JN Airmail- February 12th, 2017

Another week and another edition of Jets Nation Air Mail! This week we talk about coaching, management, ownership, possible trade scenarios and more! 

If you have questions either Jets related, or about hockey in general, we encourage you to e-mail us at JNAirMail@shaw.ca or tweet at us on the Twitter machine – but include the hashtag #JNAirMail so we don’t miss that question!

And here.. we… go…

Art: Yes, yes he is. With 563 losses as of press time, he’s 14 games behind Al Arbour’s mark of 577. He’s actually in 3rd place on that rather dubious list as he’s also 10 losses behind Scotty Bowman. Of course the biggest difference is Arbour and Bowman are legendary coaches with 13 Stanley Cups between them and PoMo is.. Well he has a .439 career playoff win percentage. Paul’s career regular season points percentage (points his teams his earned divided by maximum available) is also the lowest of the coaches in the top ten (or is that “bottom ten”?) Now I know this all sounds like piling on for poor Paul, he hasn’t ever really been handed the keys to top level teams and at the very least you can say that even despite his poor record, he’s managed to see 19 seasons as an NHL head coach, so he’s done a few things right.

Jacob: PoMo hasn’t been given a fair shake. Cheveldayoff has not provided him with an adequate goaltending/defenceman situation and until those holes are significantly tweaked, PoMO doesn’t have a contending lineup to work with. The Jets arguably have one of the best top-six’s in the entire league and to have such a poor defensive team is a toxic mix and one that needs to be sorted out this offseason. 

Art: Once a player clears waivers – that is no team puts a claim on him – he does not have to clear waivers for either 30 days, or if he plays less than 10 NHL games. For the record, it will be 30 days come February 16th, so for Pavs that is what will come first. After that he will have to clear waivers again, which may make things interesting. Will the Jets keep him for the rest of the season? Was this a ploy just to see if they can put him on waivers again? At this point, your guess is as good as anyone’s

Garret: A player can hit waivers more than once. Mark Barberio cleared the first time, when I said the Jets should have taken him on Twitter, and then he was taken by Colorado the second time, when I wrote on Jets Nations that the Jets should have taken him. Another good player to hit waivers more than once this season: Seth Griffith.

Jacob: What they said.

Art: It’s a bit early to speculate about next year, but honestly I think right now he can’t be happy with where this team is. Yes I know TNSE has preached that this was somehow a “growth” or “development” year or whatever they wanted to call it, but man I would hope he isn’t happy with 28th place and looking at the very real prospect of playing out the rest of this season in “meaningless” games. (Meaningless for the Jets in terms of standings that is, I am sure they’ll find value in being spoilers or “evaluating” talent.)

Mack: I’m amazed that this hasn’t happened yet. Every other sports team has to deal with short-sighted ownership making dumb deals to “win now”; somehow the Jets have ended up with True North, who are seemingly content to oversee a mediocre Jets team indefinitely. Maybe they’ll wake up soon and start firing people? Maybe they won’t, and they’ll extend Maurice this summer and give Chevy another kick at the can? Who knows.

Dustin: I don’t think Chevy’s rope is as short as most people do. I have a feeling that he is working from a long-term, big picture perspective. I think that ownership had five or six years where they could lay their foundation and not have to worry about winning, and I think that the next two years are the real critical ones. I know fans won’t be happy about that, but it appears to me that this is what has happened and that’s why no one (except Claude Noel) has lost their job.

Garret: It’s a process.

Jacob: TNSE is in on being patient and they seemingly have a great deal of confidence in Chevy, it’s going to be the status quo for a while.

Art: The Jets have to be sellers at this point. We’ll be getting more into that this week as we near the trade deadline, but this season has been proof that the club is still woefully thin on defensive prospects and not much better forward wise.

Mack: This is a tricky question in light of the expansion draft this summer. The Jets wouldn’t want to trade for a young prospect and then be forced to expose someone they value to the expansion draft. So yeah, if you can get draft picks instead of prospects — do that. The only trade options that jump out to me are Stafford (lol) and Mathias. So it probably isn’t going to be an exciting trade deadline for Jets fans.

Dustin: The Jets would love to be sellers, but I don’t think they have much to sell. Not at the deadline, anyway. Looking at the summer, perhaps they trade some of their forward depth for blueline depth (maybe Copp? Petan?), but I’m not expecting any major moves in the next few weeks.

Garret: This is a bit more in depth than we can cover over this forum and deserves more of a series in itself. That said, I think the Jets need to either trade some forward assets or use free agency to upgrade Pavelec/Hutchinson and also one young (and expansion draft exempt) top-four, left-shot defender. Easier said than done.

Jacob: I’d like to see the Jets package something up for a top-four ‘D’/ goaltender. I think the likely occurrence is we see the Jets get some fillers for their defenceman voids until they can draft and develop a really solid one. If I’m the Jets, I’m making a package for a 1b type goalie to split the workload with Hellebuyck next year.