Better stop by the ATM on your way to the future, Mr. Chipman

Opinion

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This article was published 31/03/2017 (3087 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mark Chipman, like every Winnipegger forever, loves a bargain.

The owner of the Winnipeg Jets got a huge one when he purchased the Atlanta Thrashers in 2011 for a paltry US$170 million — one-half of what Forbes says the Jets are currently worth, and one-third of the $500-million expansion fee Las Vegas paid to join the NHL club.

And Chipman has enjoyed that bargain since, with a team that has, for six seasons now, had either the lowest or among the lowest payrolls in the league, while playing every every game in front of sellout crowds — that pay some of the highest ticket prices in the NHL — and raking in TV-rights dough.

But the free ride is now officially over and some monstrous bills will come due in the next year in what looks to be the kind of make-or-break moment that could define this franchise for years to come.

And that’s why I’m going to argue that after years of low spending and wallowing in mediocrity, this franchise needs to go all-in before the puck drops next season, while they still have all the young talent in place to take a legitimate run at the Stanley Cup the Hockey News predicted they would win in 2018-19.

So what’s so suddenly urgent after six years? And why the big hurry now with a roster that is the second-youngest in the NHL and has, on paper at least, years — even decades, in the case of teenager Patrik Laine — of good hockey ahead?

The answer to both questions is that the Jets have a perfect storm of expiring contracts bearing down on them that is very soon going to force management to signal what they intend to be: A team that drafts, develops and then pays its best young talent (in the mould of the Chicago Blackhawks) or a team that drafts, develops and then trades away its best young talent when it becomes too expensive (like, say, baseball’s Florida Marlins).

Consider: at the conclusion of next season, almost half of the current Jets roster — 11 of 24 skaters — are scheduled to become either restricted or unrestricted free agents, including the likes of defencemen Jacob Trouba and Josh Morrissey and forwards Nikolaj Ehlers, Adam Lowry and Joel Armia.

Every one of those guys is going to be looking for a massive raise.

Trouba, who is set to make just $2.8 million next season, was asking for $7 million a year over eight years during contract negotiations last year that ultimately led to an aborted holdout.

You think Trouba is going to take less now — or less than the $7.6 million a year Dustin Byfuglien is earning — after a spectacular 2016-17 season in which he proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he has what it takes to be an elite NHL defenceman for years to come?

Trouba is going to get paid, big-time, either in the form a contract extension this summer or a whole new contract after next season.

Ehlers? In just his second season in the NHL, Ehlers has 23 goals and 38 assists for 61 points, and there are four games left in the season. That’s eight goals and 12 points more than Mark Scheifele scored in his second NHL season — and just two years later, Scheifele is now considered one of the best forwards in the entire league.

You think Ehlers is going to get a raise from the $894,000 a year he currently makes? Quadruple that, at a minimum.

Morrissey? He just played his way onto the Jets’ top pairing in his rookie season. Even Trouba didn’t do that. Morrissey’s current contract pays him $863,000 a season, making him — for my money — the best bargain in the entire NHL right now, and another man who is about to get a big bump in salary.

Lowry? He’s big, he’s mean and, with 14 goals this season, it’s not hard to squint and see a 20-goal scorer in his future. His current salary is $1.125 million a season. That is going to be walking-around money by the time Lowry’s agent is finished with general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff.

Throw into the mix Armia, Nic Petan (restricted free agent after next season) and Bryan Little (unrestricted free agent after next season) and no matter how I crunched the numbers this week, those seven players alone would command at least $30 million in payroll heading into 2018-19.

Add that $30 million to the $29 million the Jets already have committed for 2018-19 to Blake Wheeler, Scheifele, Byfuglien, Tyler Myers and Mathieu Perreault (assuming they don’t lose Perreault to Vegas in this summer’s expansion draft) and that’s $59 million in payroll in a league in which the salary cap is currently $73 million.

That would leave Cheveldayoff just about $14 million in 2018-19 to pay two goalies — one of whom has got be a whole lot better than the pair the Jets had this year — and six more roster skaters, including Laine, the biggest elephant of all in the room.

Laine doesn’t become a restricted free agent until 2019, but the Jets will obviously want to extend him long before then and they will have to give him a monster raise to do so, meaning his base salary of $925,000 that is currently on the books for 2018-19 could well be many, many multiples more than that.

And while you’re scratching your head trying to figure out how Cheveldayoff is going to make all that work within a $73-million cap, add this to your deliberations — none of this even includes promising young non-roster players such as Tucker Poolman, who is also set to become a free agent after next season and is expected to challenge for a job on the big club in the fall.

The answer to how Chevy is going to fit all those parts under the umbrella of the salary cap in 2018 is actually quite simple — he’s not. It’s impossible. Even if he gets the green light next year to spend to the cap ceiling for the first time in the history of Jets 2.0, something would still have to give — and someone, or maybe even a few someones, would have to go.

The reality of having a pool of young talent that is the envy of the entire NHL was always that all that young talent was going to eventually have to get paid, and that reckoning is coming in 2018.

So where does that leave the Jets heading into next season? Well, I’d argue that owners who, from the beginning, told fans that there would be money to spend when the time was right must now walk that talk.

With so much uncertainty about what this team will look like in 2018-19 and beyond, I’d argue the right time is right now — while there is so much young talent tied to affordable contracts — to spend whatever it takes, be aggressive in free agency and maybe even trade some of that soon-to-be-unaffordable young talent to have a real opportunity to contend for the Cup next season.

That begins, obviously, with a new goalie. Over and over again this year — including Thursday’s 4-3 overtime win over Anaheim — the Jets have looked like a very good hockey team with very lousy goaltending.

It was a colossal mistake ever thinking Connor Hellebuyck and Michael Hutchinson could carry the load this year. Asked about that on TSN Thursday night, Chevy mumbled something about Jets fans being mad if he’d have done something else with the goalies this year, too.

I’m not sure if Chevy meant he’d have also been criticized if Ondrej Pavelec had been on the opening-night roster instead of down the hall cutting the tags off his Moose jersey. Bottom line, he has to finally get things right in net in the coming months, when proven veterans Marc-Andre Fleury and Ben Bishop are set to be available, as well as the likes of Scott Darling (my pick), Peter Budaj, Jonathan Bernier, Mike Condon, Brian Elliott, Chad Johnson, Darcy Kuemper, Steve Mason, Ryan Miller and Anders Nilsson.

Failing to get this right — again — is simply not an option. Jets fans were willing to give Chevy a pass on the first three seasons, happy as we were just to have NHL hockey back. And the faithful remained patient after the Jets followed up a playoff appearance in 2015 with a big step back in 2015-16.

But that patience has worn dangerously thin with another miss this year.

And if the same thing happens next spring? Well, I’d argue even Chipman, who seems to want to run his team more as a family than what they actually are — a collection of highly paid mercenaries — would have to bid farewell to Chevy and, presumably, Paul Maurice.

And that would create the scenario where the Jets would head into a 2018-19 season in which the Hockey News boldly predicted they’ll sip from the Stanley Cup with a brand-new GM, a brand-new head coach and a roster drastically remade by salary-cap realities.

Some fans will argue right now that the departures of Chevy and Maurice are exactly what needs to happen for this team to progress. I’m willing to give them one more year to get it right — but only one.

Make the playoffs — or make way.

Look, you can argue that Chipman and partner David Thomson have gotten what they paid for — a low-budget team that has missed the playoffs five out of six seasons and got swept in four straight games the one time they did get in.

And it is probably not coincidental that the only three teams in the NHL who spent less on payroll this season than Winnipeg — New Jersey, Florida and Carolina — will also watch the playoffs from the couch.

But it is also worth noting that the four teams immediately above the Jets in terms of payroll this season — Edmonton (26th), Ottawa (25th), Nashville (24th) and Boston (23rd) — are all playoff teams, while the team with the highest payroll in the entire league — Detroit — will miss the post-season for the first time since 1990.

All of which is to say it’s not necessarily how much you spend — although that certainly helps — but how you spend it that counts most when you’re trying to ice a competitive team in today’s NHL.

But if Chipman and the Jets are serious about competing as something other than an annual also-ran, they’re going to have to begin, immediately, doing both — spending more and spending it much more wisely.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek