Jets counting on veteran coach

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/10/2014 (4238 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The sweeping change urged by many Winnipeg Jets fans — new players and better results — has not come, but the Jets are selling change just the same as they head for the start of the NHL 2014-15 season Thursday in Arizona.

For their fourth season in Winnipeg, it looks like three new players will start on the roster. All are bottom-six forwards but one of them is prospect Adam Lowry, who has had a commendable, steady training camp. Another, third-line centre Mathieu Perreault, is effectively a replacement for departed centre Olli Jokinen, only with a little more offence.

Today, it’s hard to see how these incremental player changes are going to make an immediate difference — the cream of an improving prospects list is clearly still a year or two away — so what the Jets are really pushing is the first full-time season for coach Paul Maurice.

GM Kevin Cheveldayoff has been direct in selling Maurice’s experience and first attempt at training camp, complete with a new emphasis on fitness, then defence. He gave Maurice a four-year contract in April, a clear vote of confidence in the new coach’s plan.

Maurice took over the club last January and posted an 18-12-5 record. Still, the Jets were unable to avoid the franchise’s habitual late-season swoon, dropping to 11th place with 84 points in the difficult Western Conference at the finish line.

The coach’s desire for better fitness was an early demand and was implemented when camp began Sept. 18.

The Jets skated and practised, rarely scrimmaging. They came out of the exhibition season at 3-4, their sixth straight pre-season without a winning record, but Maurice said the focus on fitness, new systems and injuries were reasons to discount those wins and losses.

So, the direction seems clear, but will the Jets be able to deliver on defence?

In short, they must if they’re to make any headway in the Central Division.

Last year’s Central record was a sad 9-15-5, worst of the division’s seven members.

Overall goals against numbered 237, 10 fewer than goals scored and still way too close to three against per game. Some point to Maurice’s record of last year’s back half, that for and against came out exactly even (96-96). When it mattered most, yes the Jets did have injuries, but their goals differential was under water (51-56) over the final 19 games.

And overall, the team was one of the NHL’s bottom-halfers in five-on-five play, also a negative.

Overall, 35 games was probably too small a sample by which to judge Maurice and these Jets.

They return embattled starting goalie Ondrej Pavelec, who had a good pre-season but is coming off 2013-14 numbers that were trending in the wrong direction, a 22-26-7 record, a 3.01 GAA and a .901 save percentage.

There is better health but there are no new faces on the blue-line, so Maurice’s system is being billed as the catalyst for better goaltending and better overall defence, something the Jets/Thrashers organization has never experienced.

Other problematic areas need addressing. In tandem with the big-picture defensive issues is the Jets were the NHL’s third-worst faceoff team last season, with a deficit of more than 300 losses to wins. That’s a lot of risky, non-possession time.

Another was missed shots, 1,027 last season. Winnipeg, according to league stats, was seventh-worst in terms of inaccuracy.

And for sure one difference-maker was a poor power play. At just 15.4 per cent, it was bottom-six and one of five also-ran teams (Calgary, Vancouver, Buffalo and Florida were the others) that didn’t average a power-play goal for every two games.

On the plus side, Maurice has repeatedly pointed to his team’s battle and response level of late last season, including when the Jets limped to the end with eight regulars missing due to injury.

And on the entire season, the team played in the third-most one-goal decisions in the NHL, 46, winning just 21 of those, a sliver lining if you want one.

From the two weeks of camp, beyond Pavelec’s performance there is evidence to suggest the Jets may be able to ice a bona fide second line.

The trio of Evander Kane and Blake Wheeler flanking second-year centre Mark Scheifele will get some time to take a bite out of the regular season and if it can gel, it would give the team at least two lines that are offensively capable.

That could be a key element in supporting one of Maurice’s top priorities, improving goal differential, by making the Jets harder to play against.

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca