Daily Faceoff is a news site with no direct affiliation to the NHL, or NHLPA

The Winnipeg Jets are underperforming, but it hasn’t just been bad luck

Mike Gould
Mike Gould
Dec 4, 2025, 14:36 EST
The Winnipeg Jets are underperforming, but it hasn’t just been bad luck
Credit: Bob Frid-Imagn Images

The Winnipeg Jets woke up on December 4, 2024 with an 18-8-0 record and 36 points, tied for the second-most in the entire National Hockey League. They went on to win the Presidents’ Trophy and reached the second round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

It’s amazing just how much one year can change things. As of Thursday morning, the Jets sit outside a playoff spot with just under a third of the 2025-26 NHL regular season in the books. Everything about their season to date — their 13-12-1 record, their .519 points percentage, even their modest plus-1 goal differential — screams mediocrity, but it might not even be that good.

Connor Hellebuyck, the reigning Vezina and Hart Trophy as winner as the league’s top goaltender and most valuable player, respectively, has been out of action since November 15 while dealing with a knee injury. In that time, the Jets have gone 2-5-1, most recently losing to the Buffalo Sabres and Montreal Canadiens to kick off their December schedule.

Hellebuyck has always been one of the few goaltenders consistently able to paper over even his team’s most glaring flaws, but this year is looking a little bit different. Even at their best, the Jets have seldom been true puck possession juggernauts — good, but not great — but this year, they’ve been downright bad across the board.

According to Natural Stat Trick, the Jets are a bottom-five team in the NHL this year in both shot and expected goal differential at full strength. They’re currently second-last in scoring chance rates, having generated just 505 of them compared to 611 against. And while they looked to be showing gradual signs of improvement in all three categories in late November, their last two games have been full of setbacks.

The Jets kicked off the holiday month with a miserable 5-1 road loss to the Sabres in which nothing went right. It looked like they might be able to mount a comeback when Kyle Connor scored midway through the second period, but they lost focus quickly, as evidenced by the comedy of errors that led to Alex Tuch restoring the hosts’ three-goal lead just over a minute later.

If anything, that game more than any other encapsulates this Jets season: Connor, Mark Scheifele, and Josh Morrissey each had one point, but nobody else did, and the Sabres out-chanced the Jets 28 to 15 at 5-on-5. Eric Comrie allowed three goals on 14 shots before being pulled in favor of Thomas Milic, who surrendered two more on 17 against. In the end, Buffalo outshot Winnipeg 31 to 24.

It’s been tough for the Jets to overcome the loss of Nikolaj Ehlers, who consistently drove play to a strong degree during his decade in Manitoba. The Danish forward signed with the Carolina Hurricanes as an unrestricted free agent over the summer, leaving the Jets with a big hole to fill up front.

But instead of doing that, Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff went out and signed a pair of thirty-somethings in Gustav Nyquist and Jonathan Toews to one-year deals. It hasn’t worked. Ostensibly brought in to fill Ehlers’ shoes as an undersized playmaking top-six winger, the 36-year-old Nyquist has been anything but, recording zero goals and six assists through 20 games while seeing his ice time decrease significantly.

Toews, meanwhile, has struggled enormously to keep up in his return to the NHL after a two-year absence. The Winnipeg product has three goals and nine points through 26 games to go along with a team-worst minus-12 rating, which has only gotten worse as the season has worn on. Instead of goal or point streaks, Toews had a seven-game minus streak with the Jets between November 13 and 28, recording zero points over that span.

While it’s certainly valid to debate the merits of Toews attempting a comeback after two years away from the game, it’s far more relevant to question why exactly the Jets felt comfortable entering the season without either a capable replacement for Ehlers or a feasible No. 2 center behind Scheifele. After all, the Jets have made trade after trade over the years to address their center depth, acquiring the likes of Paul Stastny, Kevin Hayes, and Sean Monahan to shore up the position. At 37 years of age and with significant question marks around his health, Toews isn’t exactly a legitimate top-six option at this point in his career.

Hellebuyck’s injury has merely exacerbated the foundational problems impacting this Jets team, and maybe that’s for the best. Things are bound to improve once the Jets get their MVP back, but they shouldn’t stand pat with the skaters they already have. Cheveldayoff has a solid collection of assets at his disposal, and even with the relatively shallow pool of potential options available via trade, the Jets should be able to retool their roster in a meaningful way.

Unlike some of their fellow Canadian clubs, the Jets don’t need to tear it all down and start over. They have Hellebuyck, Scheifele, Connor, and Morrissey locked in for the foreseeable future. All they need to do is make smart, calculated bets on potential long-term pieces. Adding more declining veterans like Toews, Nyquist, and Luke Schenn simply isn’t the way to go for this Jets team, and their recent play (and record) reflects that.

The Central Division is as competitive as ever, and the Jets can’t afford to repeat last year’s mistake of largely standing pat. They should be aggressive now, because before long, it’ll be the right time for them to strike.

Recently by Mike Gould

MORE FACEOFF.IN YOUR INBOX.
CLICK TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR DAILY NEWSLETTER