When will the Jets transition from the Thrashers’ leftovers to their own young players?
This summer will mark the sixth anniversary of the demise of the Atlanta Thrashers and rebirth of the Winnipeg Jets. Yet, the Jets still lean heavily on a core of players inherited from that failed Atlanta franchise. When will Winnipeg’s up-and-comers take over?
The process has certainly already started. A trickle of young talent last season has turned into a torrent this year, and while ex-Thrashers still hold down prominent roles, the Jets are diligently making room for their young talent.
The demotion of goaltender Ondrej Pavelec out of training camp this season was an indication that the team was serious about its youth movement. Pavelec, who had been the starter for five seasons in Winnipeg and two in Atlanta, was perfect in his lone preseason game. It didn’t matter, he was out in favour of 23-year-old Connor Hellebuyck and 26-year-old Michael Hutchinson.
Now, Pavelec is back, and has started Winnipeg’s last four games, but surely that will not continue. Whether it’s a matter of trying a third option after the struggles of Hellebuyck and Hutchinson, a desire to showcase a potential rental player, or a little bit of both, it’s hard to imagine Pavelec staying with the organization past the expiration of his contract this summer.
It isn’t just in net where changes have been made either.
Bryan Little and Blake Wheeler are still important players for the Jets, and rightly so. As young players, the two were linemates for the final months in Atlanta, after Wheeler was brought in as part of a trade deadline deal with Boston. It was a clever acquisition by then-GM Rick Dudley, although the Bruins won a Cup with Rich Peverley, so there weren’t many complaints on either end of the transaction.
So far, Wheeler and Little have defied traditional aging curves, which show that most forwards are at their offensive peak around age 25. Wheeler had his best 5-on-5 scoring rate last season at age 29, while Little’s age 26-29 campaigns have been the four best of his career from a 5-on-5 points per 60 minutes perspective. Nevertheless, most players start to show significant declines around age 30, and it is to be expected that Wheeler and Little will see their importance reduced in coming seasons.
As it is, they’re practically the last significant veterans left up front:
A year ago, Winnipeg gave just over 45 per cent of its ice time and got slightly more than 40 per cent of its scoring from forwards under the age of 26. This season, two-thirds of the ice time is going to the young forwards and they’re generating two-thirds of the team’s scoring.
The process started in earnest last season, at Little’s expense though, through no fault of his. He was knocked out of the lineup by injury in mid-February, opening the door for 2011 No. 7 pick Mark Scheifele to step into a top line role.
Scheifele was brilliant immediately, and it hasn’t stopped. At the time of Little’s injury, Scheifele had scored 41 goals in 201 career games. Since, he has 37 goals in just 70 contests. He also has 76 points, a better than point-per-game pace.
Nikolaj Ehlers and Patrik Laine rank second and third in team scoring. Ehlers already has one point more than he managed in the entirety of last season. Laine is still tied for the club in goals at 21 (with Scheifele), despite missing eight games with a concussion.
That’s the upper tier, but by no means the entirety of the Jets’ stockpile of young talent. The bottom-six roles on the team have largely been turned over to emerging NHL’ers. 2015 first-rounder Jack Roslovic leads the farm team in scoring at the age of 19. Even with disappointing pro debuts from the likes of Brendan Lemieux and Kyle Connor (who had 35 goals in 38 games in college last year), Winnipeg has a bounty of good young players.
It’s on defence where the influence of the ex-Thrashers can be most clearly seen. Tobias Enstrom and Dustin Byfuglien were the top pairing during that final year in Atlanta, and both find themselves in the top-four in Winnipeg today. Byfuglien received a long-term extension from the Jets last summer, while Enstrom has another year on his contract after this one.
Those two may be reminders of the past, but their partners are anything but. Byfuglien has mostly spent the year with Josh Morrissey, an offensive defenceman who scored 28 goals in 59 games in his final WHL season. Now 21, Morrissey has averaged nearly 18 minutes per game at 5-on-5, even as Winnipeg waits to introduce him to special teams at the NHL level.
No such restrictions exist for Jacob Trouba. With Tyler Myers injured for much of the season, Trouba has been given an opportunity, averaging 24 minutes per game, scoring at a career-best pace and playing in all situations.
Yet, Trouba’s underlying numbers have not been all that good this season—he’s just below the team average in shot metrics and well below in goals—and his current bridge contract is more ceasefire than peace treaty. It may be that the 26-year-old Myers is the long-term complement to Byfuglien on the right side of Winnipeg’s blue line.
Beyond Trouba and Morrissey, the Jets are a little shy on young defencemen. That’s undoubtedly part of the reason they spent the three picks after Laine at the 2016 draft on blue liners, but it’s going to take years for those players to arrive.
That question posed at the beginning thus has two answers. In one sense, the Jets’ transition away from ex-Thrashers is well underway, with the team’s forward prospects taking on a dramatically increased role this season. At the same time, the four significant ex-Thrasher players remaining all play important minutes, and on the blue line particularly there aren’t obvious replacements on the way.
Winnipeg is making room for the future, but it isn’t forgetting the past.
