A year ago, Jack Roslovic was considered part of a second wave of young talent of sorts that would take another step to being full-fledged, productive members of the Winnipeg Jets along with the likes of Sami Niku and Mason Appleton. Fast forward a year and it didn’t quite turn out that way, but there is still lots to be hopeful for as Roslovic showed plenty of un-tapped potential and when given a chance to run with a top offensive line, he held his own.

This past season was the second year of a three year, $3,412,500 deal signed on July 18, 2016. Roslovic will be a restricted free agent when his contract expires July 2020 (Source: NHLNumbers.com)

Roslovic continues to show promise even if his season was a little bit up and down but a lot of that can be attributed to a young player still trying to find his way at the top level and a coaching staff that didn’t seem to know what to do with him which really was just a continuation of the struggled Paul Maurice had a season earlier trying to find a good fit for the young American forward. He spent most of his time on the club’s bottom six forward group. Mathieu Perreault seemed to be a pretty consistent linemate through the season. Brendan Lemieux was a pretty consistent linemate as well for the first half of the season while Andrew Copp was on his line down the regular season stretch.

There was a stretch of games where an injury to Nik Ehlers opened the door and gave Roslovic some second line duty with Bryan Little and Patrik Laine. While the trio had some mixed results, Roslovic got to play higher than average minutes including a lot more time on the power play. That increase in ice time gave him more chances to impress which he did as the calendar flipped from January to February when he picked up a hat trick against the Anaheim Ducks and had six points in four games en-route to being named the NHL’s first star for the first week of February.

When Nik Ehlers returned to the lineup, Roslovic again became an odd-player out of the lineup. Near the very end of the season he was put on the third line with Adam Lowry and the results were respectable, but Roslovic is more of an offensive player and it felt like his ability was being handcuffed.

At 22, Roslovic still has plenty of room for growth and he should multiple flashes of potential last season when pressed into top six forward duty. Next season will be a big one for him as he needs to take that next step in convincing his coaches to hand him such a spot on the roster on a full time basis, but some of the onus will also be on the coaches to pair him with complementary players as Roslovic can’t quite carry a line on his own yet – at least, not that we’ve seen or have been given a chance to see. That said we’re also going to need to find out if he has a future up the middle of the ice for the Jets, or if he can adjust to being a full time right winger – something he started to adapt very well at as last season wore on.