Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/03/2014 (3372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Draft and develop. Draft and develop. Draft and develop. Boy, does it get old when the results aren’t readily visible at the NHL level.

The Winnipeg Jets will miss the post-season for the third straight year and the easy but inaccurate conclusion is to write them and GM Kevin Cheveldayoff’s work off as tired and ineffective.

Or one can take a close look at where the Jets as an organization are now situated from top to bottom and see the remarkable change since Cheveldayoff began turning the soil of this franchise.

The Jets are far closer to perennial success today even if the first taste has yet to arrive.

Organizational depth was the first step in Cheveldayoff’s plan and is finally beginning to show results below the surface. It’s like filling a glass of water. The drops have to hit the bottom of the tumbler before they can get to the brim.

To say Cheveldayoff has ignored the franchise’s NHL roster would be incorrect as he’s gone about signing what he views as his best players to long-term deals. And through the draft, he’s inserted two players, Mark Scheifele and Jacob Trouba, who are now the most important on their team and will soon be NHL elite.

But the real work, under the mandate and plan established by owner Mark Chipman and Cheveldayoff, has been at the AHL and prospect level. And the returns are undeniably strong.

On Wednesday night, the affiliate St. John’s IceCaps won their ninth straight game with rookies J.C. Lipon, Adam Lowry and Brenden Kitchton leading the way. This isn’t a team built on castoff veterans but has 12 players on the active roster that can still be considered prospects. They’re winning but developing, too.

On newsstands today, The Hockey News’ Future Watch issue rates the Jets as having the NHL’s eighth-best crop of prospects, down from fifth a year ago due to the fact Scheifele and Trouba moved straight from junior and college, respectively, to the NHL.

Depth eventually becomes a red herring if it doesn’t equate to wins and playoff success but the Jets and Winnipeg, with their unique situation as both a franchise and a market, can’t have one without the other and they have to come in sequence.

When one looks at the Jets as a hockey entity from the bottom up and not just at the surface level, Cheveldayoff is getting it done and the organization is markedly better off than when he took over.

To best understand what Cheveldayoff has been up to and what he’s accomplished, it’s necessary to look back with cold eyes on what he inherited and the conditions under which he must work.

The short answer to what Cheveldayoff was handed when he became GM of the Jets is: very little. An NHL roster with no elite players, some kids rushed up to the bigs too quickly and a mix of veterans ranging from dead-weight contracts to middle-of-the-lineup players.

Dustin Byfuglien was an all-star defenceman and Blake Wheeler had a top-end package of skills but still hadn’t figured out how to squeeze the most from his assets. Andrew Ladd was the team’s leading scorer with 59 points and the club finished out of the playoffs for the fourth straight year with a 34-36-12 record.

Nothing new here. The Thrashers were a bad hockey team in Atlanta and moving to Winnipeg as the Jets didn’t spark some magical change.

Long before Chipman purchased an NHL franchise, he knew he was getting one of two teams and he put his people on the case so he’d know exactly what he was buying when the time arrived.

Craig Heisinger, Chipman’s top hockey man at the time, was dispatched to find out what both the Phoenix Coyotes and Atlanta Thrashers had in the cupboard. Soon the focus narrowed to the Thrashers and the answer came back that the NHL roster needed a lot of work and even more troubling was the lack of value in the farm system.

Ivan Telegin was the lone A prospect in the entire organization. The club’s most recent first-round draft picks (Zach Bogosian, Evander Kane and Alex Burmistrov) had been rushed to the NHL.

Prospects and draft picks had been repeatedly dealt for rentals or lost in bad trades and the prospect pool was bankrupt of talent. Hindsight is 20-20 but not one of the prospects in the organization that came north as the Jets in the spring of 2011 has developed into a meaningful NHLer. Not one.

None of the franchise’s AHL players from that season have made the jump to the NHL as significant contributors. Not one.

This isn’t open for debate anymore. The returns are in. The cupboard could not have been more bare.

Certainly there has been some development at the NHL level as Wheeler has grown into his talents, Bryan Little has continued to improve and Kane put up 30 goals in his first season in Winnipeg.

The Jets remain one of the youngest teams in the league and the best days of this roster are still ahead.

In the accompanying boxes to this story, put together with the talent- evaluation expertise of NHL GMs and scouts, the Jets now have six A prospects (blue-chip prospects with potential to be top-six F or top-four D) and 10 B prospects (pro future, skewing towards NHL depth player). That’s up from one A and 10 Bs in 2011.

Not to mention, Trouba and Scheifele, drafted and developed and turned into NHLers with huge upside by Cheveldayoff.

Competition

It’s taken three years to get to this point but development moves at its own pace. Free agency is both unpredictable in what is available and uncontrollable in terms of price. Not to mention the competition Winnipeg faces in terms of location and market saleability. Let’s face it, the New Yorks and Chicagos and L.A.s have it over our fine city where rich young men are concerned.

Trading picks and prospects got the franchise into this mess in the first place and doesn’t become a realistic approach until a GM can do it from a position of strength underpinned by organizational depth.

Some have tried to argue the point Cheveldayoff is unable to make a trade.

More accurately, Cheveldayoff has been unwilling to chase bad deals.

Now, armed with burgeoning depth, this summer might be the time for Cheveldayoff to alter his NHL roster with a swap or two. Maybe it’s time to move a veteran D for a number of younger pieces. Shaking up the forward corps via trade might also be a realistic and productive possibility this summer.

Deadline deals, where the prices are torqued by playoff races, often tend to be bad for the buyer when the long-term picture is taken into account. But making an off-season deal from a position of strength shouldn’t be shied away from, and Cheveldayoff finally has some assets to shuffle around.

Trading for the sake of trading doesn’t help an organization and chasing false playoff expectations is the most dangerous practice of them all. Cheveldayoff’s deliberate approach has clearly reaped the organization benefits.

The GM has given the organization legs and shown it how to walk. Now he must make it run.

 

gary.lawless@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @garylawless

That was then…

Here’s the organizational roster Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff inherited in 2011:

PLAYER	2011 STATUS	TODAY’S STATUS
NHL
Nik Antroprov	Veteran NHLer	Now in KHL
Zach Bogosian	No. 3 pick in 2008	Learning his craft, signed to a seven-year deal
Eric Boulton	Fringe player	New York Islanders
Alex Burmistrov	Talented forward	RFA left for KHL
Dustin Byfuglien	All-star defenceman	Third year of five-year contract
Radek Dvorak	Veteran NHLer	Left as UFA and now with Carolina
Toby Enstrom	Puck moving defenceman	Year one of five-year contract
Ron Hainsey	Veteran NHL blue-liner	Left as UFA and now with Carolina
Evander Kane	No. 4 pick in 2009	Now in second year of six-year deal
Andrew Ladd	Second-line NHLer	Jets captain in third year of five-year contract
Bryan Little	Second-line NHLer	First year of five-year contract
Chris Mason	Veteran NHL backup goalie	Now in Europe
Frederick Meyer	Veteran D	Retired and coaching in Europe
Johnny Oduya	Veteran NHL D	Traded to Blackhawks for draft picks
Ondrej Pavelec	NHL goalie	Now in second year of five-year contract
Jim Slater	NHL regular	Second year of three-year contract
Tim Stapleton	Fringe NHLer	Now in KHL
Anthony Stewart	NHL regular	Now in KHL
Mark Stuart	NHL regular	Recently signed four-year contract extension
Chris Thorburn	NHL regular	Last year of three-year contract
Blake Wheeler	NHL regular	Front-line player in first year of six-year contract
AHL
Patrice Cormier	B prospect	Jets property in AHL
Chris Carrozzi	C prospect	Playing semi-pro hockey
Angelo Esposito	C prospect	Now in Europe
Brett Festerling	C prospect	Now in Europe
Michael Forney	C prospect	Now in Europe
Riley Holzapfel	C prospect	Now in Europe
Carl Klingberg	C prospect	Jets property in AHL
Andrew Kozek	C prospect	Now in Europe
Jason Krog	Career minor leaguer	Now in Europe
Arturs Kulda	B prospect	Now in KHL
Spencer Machacek	B prospect	Traded and now in AHL
Peter Mannino	C prospect	Now with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in AHL
Ben Maxwell	B prospect	Now in Europe
Ian McKenzie	D prospect	Now in ECHL
Paul Postma	B prospect	First year of two-year NHL contract with Jets
Zach Redmond	B prospect	Jets property in AHL
Rob Schremp	Fringe NHLer	Now in Europe
Jaime Sifers	Career minor leaguer	Now in Europe
Prospects
John Albert	B prospect	On recall with Jets
Akim Aliu	C prospect	Traded to Calgary and now in Europe
Ben Chiarot	B prospect	Solid defender in AHL
Yasin Cisse	D prospect	Jets property in ECHL
Alex Kangas	D prospect	Now in ECHL
Tanner Lane	B prospect	Jets property in college
Daultan Leveille	C prospect	Now in ECHL
Jesse Martin	D prospect	Inactive
Kendall McFaull	D prospect	Now in Canadian college hockey
Julian Melchiori	B prospect	Jets property in AHL
Eric O’Dell	B prospect	On recall with Jets
Danick Paquette	D prospect	Now in ECHL
Eddie Pasquale	B prospect	Jets property in AHL
Fredrik Petterson	C prospect	Now in KHL
Jared Ross	D prospect	Now in Europe
Jordan Samuels-Thomas	C prospect	Jets property in NCAA
Vinny Saponari	C prospect	Now with Milwaukee in AHL
Cody Sol	C prospect	Jets property in ECHL
Peter Stoykewych	B prospect	Jets property in NCAA
Ivan Telegin	A prospect	Loaned to KHL
Will O’Neill	C prospect	Jets property in AHL
Sebastian Owuya	D prospect	Inactive
Noah Welch	C prospect	Now in Europe
Fredrik Pettersson-Wentzel	B prospect goalie	Now in Europe
Andrei Zubarev	C prospect	Now in KHL

Legend:

• A prospect: blue-chip prospect with potential to be top-six F or top-four D
• B prospect: pro future, skewing towards NHL depth player
• C prospect: minor league potential
• D prospect: project
• UFA: unrestricted free agent
• RFA: restricted free agent

… this is now

Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff has had three drafts and three off-seasons to reshape his organization. Here’s what it looks like today: