It was another solid season for Scheifele who finished with a point per game pace for the third consecutive season. Although there’s no denying how important Scheifele is to the Jets, this year’s performance had some people wondering if he still has another level to his game. Let’s take a look as we examine the year of Mark Scheifele.

Don’t worry, Scheifele isn’t going anywhere as he’s locked into his current deal for another five seasons at a cost of $6.125 million. The current deal for Scheifele is widely considered one of the biggest bargains in the league given his status as a true number one centre. Even with the low AAV, the best part of the deal is that it runs for another five seasons. Having one of the most important pieces of the roster at such a controlled price is a really strong asset for the organization.

Scheifele’s season as a whole was a bit of a mixed bag. When looking at the boxscore stats, it appears that Scheifele had a tremendous year as he finished with a new career high in goals (38) and points (84). However, even though Scheifele was able to score massive amounts of points during the year the eye test began to reveal some red flags in Scheifele’s game.

There were many points during the year where Scheifele looked off his game, which is highly unusual for him. The frustrating part was that it lasted for much of the year despite Scheifele scoring 38 goals. Scheifele appeared to be tired and began to cheat the game slightly by trying to leave the zone a few seconds early or backcheck a few strides late.

One of the biggest reasons for this change in his game was the sheer amount of minutes Scheifele played all season long. When looking at all the forwards in the NHL, Scheifele played the sixth most minutes all season. When looking at a per game basis, Scheifele finished 8th in the NHL with 21:52 minutes per game. That’s extremely heavy lifting for Scheifele, especially considering that he’s never cracked the 21 minute per game mark in his career. In addition, Scheifele had to play taxing minutes while shorthanded which compounded the fatigue factor.

When looking at some of the advanced stats, they line up more with the eye test than the boxscore numbers. Scheifele finished the year with an on-ice xGoals% of 47.3%, which was fifth worst among Jets forwards. He also ranked fifth worst among Jets forwards in SCF% with 47.77%. Lastly, Scheifele finished with his worst CF% of his entire career with a 48.1%. Historically, Scheifele has almost always been above the 50% benchmark. These numbers further prove how Scheifele looked on the ice. Generally, the top line gave up a few more chances than they generated, but they managed to shoot a high percentage and still find the back of the net.

When looking at the shot maps, the Jets generated many chances from the high slot, but far fewer from the low slot. This is to be expected, as Scheifele and Connor excel at finding the open pockets in the opposing defense rather then trying to grind right in front of the crease.

The concerning part about Scheifele’s game this year came on the defensive end. As mentioned before, he was still able to score points, but his line started to give up far more chances than previous seasons.

Even though some of these warning signs were happening throughout the year, the ability to score goals silenced a lot of critics. That was the main problem with the entire top line. Despite some of the holes to their game, they were able to mask all deficiencies by shooting at a high percentage. The nice thing about Scheifele’s play this season is that a lot of it can likely be fixed by reducing his minutes and taking him off the penalty kill. That alone should help Scheifele return to his true number one centre status next season.

Playoff Scheifele is the best Scheifele as we all witnessed two seasons ago when he was chasing the record books with his scoring prowess. Although the cup run was much shorter this time around, Scheifele still had a strong series with five points in six games. It could be argued that he got out-played by O’Reilly, but Scheifele’s performance was quite strong overall.

The future is still extremely bright for Scheifele going forward. With three straight seasons averaging a point per game combined with an extremely team friendly contract, Scheifele will be leaned upon for years to come. If Maurice does a better job of managing Scheifele’s minutes going forward, he should be able to re-discover his dominating ways from prior years.