Slicing and Dicing the Jets: Adam Pardy 2015-2016

The Winnipeg Jets missed the playoffs for the fourth time in five seasons since the move to Manitoba, and the 14th time over 16 seasons over franchise history. The season does not end for us though at Jets Nation.

Welcome to our series where we take an analytical approach, dissecting what went wrong with the Jets 2015-2016 season and how to improve the team for next year.

We turn our evidence-based breakdown of the Jets with Adam Pardy’s 2015-2016 season.

Adam Pardy only dressed for fourteen games for the Jets this year, which may be in part why Pardy requested to move on from the Jets for a new opportunity. Pardy may have never brought much offense (zero! regular season goals) during his tenure as a Jet, but he was still an increadibly useful depth defender and gave more value than the team paid for.

Pardy spent most of his ice time with one of the three big right-hand defenders, so he had some of the best linemates on defense. However, Paul Maurice primarily put Pardy out there when it was bottom-six players versus bottom-six players.

The 31-year-old never saw any power play ice time, but he was used on the penalty kill.

There’s really only two things you need to know about Pardy when it comes to his performance.

First, do not expect any sort of offense to come from the depth defender. Pardy did not score a single regular-season goal for the Jets over his entire duration. While he did have quite a few primary assists for his ice time over the past three seasons, he had none this season. In fact, Pardy only had one secondary assist for 2015-2016 with the Jets. 

The second thing is that he is still increadibly useful as a depth defender. Pardy’s shot metric numbers at even strength were not his norm, but usually Pardy does pretty well in a small role. While the team struggles to score goals with Pardy on the ice, they make up for it in forcing the team to have even fewer opportunities. In addition, Pardy has been a fantastic penalty killer as a Jet.

Yes, Pardy is an increadibly imperfect player, but that is what you should expect from your depth defenseman. As far as the Jets left-shot defenders go, Pardy and Enstrom were likely the only skaters who played the level in the Jets depth chart appropriate for their talents.

Pardy will be missed, especially his #PardyDangles and #PardyOrr moments, but hopefully this vacancy forces the Jets to rightfully drop Ben Chiarot and Mark Stuart down in the depth charts.