How will the Jets approach the trade deadline amidst struggles?
A team that cannot seem to get out of its own way needs to start looking at what it might do with some of its personnel soon.
The Winnipeg Jets are far from the team that won the President’s Trophy last season. Even before Hart Trophy-winning goaltender Connor Hellebuyck was injured, the team struggled to find the consistency that made them one of the best teams in the NHL.
With Hellebuyck out, the Jets have started to stumble down the standings. Thanks to losing seven of the team’s past 10 games, seven of which in regulation, Winnipeg has fallen out of a playoff spot. Granted, they currently sit just three points out of the last Wild Card position in the Western Conference.
On Thursday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, David Pagnotta joined Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton to discuss what the Jets should do come February and March.
David Pagnotta: One of the big issues is secondary scoring. They don’t operate [Mark] Scheifele, [Kyle] Connor that combo, [Alex] Iafallo isn’t a first=line winger and Cole Perfetti, they’re hoping that he can get things going a little bit, and then eventually move him up in the lineup. Losing [Nikolaj] Ehlers…it’s created a hole. It’s created a need of additional offense within this group, especially in the top six. They’ve had some guys that have been contributing, not at a consistent level that they’d like.
It sounds like [general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff’s] out there looking for offense … They have decent amount of cap space to play with, so there’s flexibility. This is still at team that projects itself as a legitimate contender. They feel their window is still open. They want to add to that. They weren’t able to replace Ehlers, the offense that he brings. They are looking now to see if they can do that. Maybe it’s on the second line, give a little bit of assistance and kind of go from there. But this is a team that I expect to add to be a playoff team.
You can watch the full segment and entire episode here…