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Nino Niederreiter, who has played primarily a third-line role with the Jets, was one of 13 players with 30-plus points last season. (Photo by Jonathan Kozub/NHLI via Getty Images)

3 Keys to Jets’ Success In First Month of Season

Originally posted on The Hockey Writers
By Declan Schroeder | Last updated 10/8/24

The Winnipeg Jets will begin their 2024-25 regular season on Wednesday, Oct. 9 in Edmonton against the Oilers. It’s the first of 10 games in October, split evenly between home and away.

Here, we’ll look at three keys to success as the club embarks on the new campaign and attempts to make the playoffs again with players in new roles under new head coach Scott Arniel.

1: A Balanced Attack

The Jets had one of the NHL’s better four-line attacks last season, with 13 players scoring 10-plus goals, six scoring 15-plus, and 12 with 30-plus points.

Although much has been made of the team’s offseason losses, all of the 30-plus-point players and all but one of the 10-plus goal scorers remain on the team (Sean Monahan, who had 13 goals in 31 games after coming over from the Montreal Canadiens, departed in the offseason.)

Sure, it’s nice when star players paid the big bucks take over a game, and the Jets have players who can do that in Kyle Connor, Nikolaj Ehlers, Mark Scheifele, and Josh Morrissey (not to mention Connor Hellebuyck in goal.) However, for a team like Winnipeg that has no skaters ranked higher than 44th on TSN’s Top 50 NHL Players List, it’s crucial that bottom-six players chip in on offense.

Mason Appleton, Morgan Barron, Nino Niederreiter, and Adam Lowry were all part of that 30-plus point club, while Alex Iafallo was part of the 10-plus goal club and had 27 points. They’ll all need to contribute similarly if the Jets want to remain competitive in a tough Central Division that features a few existing powerhouses and a couple aspiring ones that loaded up in hopes of getting better in a hurry.

However, the Jets need to remember that their true cornerstone of success is a strong commitment to team defence, not selling out for offence and getting into track meets. They finished a modest 15th in the NHL with 259 goals last season, but won the William M. Jennings Trophy by allowing a league-low 198; when they fell away from their structure in first round of the playoffs against the Colorado Avalanche, they got completely crushed.

Rick Bowness instilled the importance of every line looking the same without the puck, and Arniel, then the associate coach, played a key role in helping the now-retired Bowness establish a new identity. Now the bench boss, Arniel will need to make sure everyone from the top down keeps buying in and that he and the leadership core are of one mind.

“When we have buy-in, the results go hand-in-hand,” Lowry said recently. “Our team’s identity is being a hard forechecking, tenacious team. When we’re playing our best, we’re tough to generate offence on and we’re a deep team that comes at you in waves.” (From ‘Ready to step up,’ Winnipeg Free Press, Oct. 7, 2024.)

2: Special Teams Success

The Jets were one of the league’s best teams at five-on-five last season, and with Arniel at the helm, should remain good at even strength. However, the power play and penalty kill both left much to be desired a lot of the time in 2023-24. Improving the 22nd- and 21st-place finishes, respectively, from 2023-24 will be key, and it will be important for both regimes to build confidence by getting off to strong starts.

New assistant coaches Davis Payne and Dean Chynoweth have been tapped to develop new special-teams strategies, which they tested in preseason. On Payne’s power play, Ehlers will slot in the “bumper” position in a 1-3-1 top-unit setup and hard-shooting defenseman Colin Miller will quarterback the second-unit. On Chynoweth’s penalty kill, Connor, Scheifele, and Ehlers will see action — they are far from the bottom-six muckers and grinders often though of as stereotypical “penalty killers” — and will hope to generate more shorthanded chances by creating turnovers and using their speed the other way.

The Jets’ power play went 6/19 (31.5 per cent) while the penalty kill went 15/20 (75 per cent) in six preseason games. The special teams hitting the ground running and avoiding a long adjustment period could go a long way to banking some early points; the few minutes a team spends up or down a man can make an outsized impact on the end result of a game. The Jets missed out on more points last season due to special teams struggles than they gained due to special teams success, and that’s a trend that has to change.

3: Adaptability by Arniel

If the Jets stumble out of the gate, Arniel must be willing to adapt and change his lineup. His top trio of Connor, Scheifele, and Gabriel Vilardi gave up a lot more chances than they generated last season and had just a 35.3 expected goals-for percentage; Connor and Scheifele have been weak defensively together for years. If they get caved in through the first few games, Arniel should pull the plug.

Arniel’s roster also features a few players who shouldn’t be feeling too comfortable. Up front, David Gustafsson and Rasmus Kupari cracked the team despite their struggles last season while top prospects Brad Lambert and Nikita Chibrikov were sent down to the Manitoba Moose despite having good preseasons (Lambert and Chibrikov being waiver exempt also played a role in the decision.) Kupari had only one assist in 28 games last season while Gustafsson once again couldn’t stay healthy; if they get off to slow starts, Lambert and Chibrikov — who had 55 and 47 points, respectively, in the American Hockey League last season — should be given chances to prove they can provide more offense and overall upside.

The Jets weren’t good on special teams last season, and Arniel has brought on two new assistant coaches who will be in charge of those areas. (Jess Starr/The Hockey Writers)

Arniel, as soon as he was named head coach, promised young players would be “vital” to his team and said recently “nothing is written in stone” regarding his line combinations (From ‘Jets forced to shuffle goaltender deck,’ Winnipeg Free Press, Oct. 7, 2024.) Talk is cheap, though, and he will need to prove he’s not just paying lip service to the youth and fans, some of whom are skeptical due to past coaches’ veteran biases.

On defence, Ville Heinola and Logan Stanley’s surgeries paved the way for offseason depth additions Dylan Coghlan and Haydn Fleury to crack the roster. However, 2022 second-rounder Elias Salomonsson, who turned heads in his first North American training camp and was the team’s final cut, should also be afforded an early NHL opportunity if either of the former struggle. A team that still considers itself in “win-now” mode should be much more concerned with icing the very best lineup every night than getting entry-level contracts to slide.

After the Jets face the Oilers in their season opener, they will return to Canada Life Centre for their home opener on Friday, Oct. 11 versus the Chicago Blackhawks.