Smart money says trade deadline just another Wednesday for Jets’ Chevy

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This article was published 24/02/2017 (3158 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The most reliable indicator of future performance is past performance — at the racetrack and in life.

And so by that barometer, you’re going to most likely be sorely disappointed if you’re hoping Winnipeg Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff will use next Wednesday’s NHL trading deadline as an opportunity to bring in reinforcements for a final playoff push by his desperate and inconsistent club.

The rap on Chevy — and the volume is cranked all the way every year at this time — is that all too often, he sits on his hands while GMs around the league use the trade market to upgrade their lineups.

I don’t buy it on several different levels, not the least of which is the idea that overpaying on deadline day is “upgrading” your team.

The Jets have had a lousy season and their playoff hopes are hanging by a thread right now, but I would submit that is mostly despite Cheveldayoff, rather than because of him.

While there’s lots to criticize in Cheveldayoff’s approach to building the Jets over the years — goaltending tops my list, along with goaltending — the notion that Winnipeg would be better positioned today if only we had a more activist general manager is misguided.

For starters, Cheveldayoff hasn’t been completely sedentary in the trade market, as we were reminded once again this week with all the retrospectives on the two-year anniversary of the blockbuster deal that sent Evander Kane and Zach Bogosian, prospect Jason Kasdorf and a damp track suit to Buffalo in exchange for Tyler Myers, Drew Stafford, Joel Armia, Brendan Lemieux and a first-round pick that became Jack Roslovic, currently the leading scorer in the Manitoba Moose lineup.

While that was his biggest trade as Jets GM — by a mile — the Kane deal was (really) just one of 22 trades Cheveldayoff has made since becoming the first GM of Jets 2.0 back in 2011, according to the website nhltradetracker.com.

So how does that number compare? Well, it’s less than half the 48 trades Chicago Blackhawks GM Stan Bowman made during the same period, but double the 11 deals Detroit Red Wings GM Ken Holland made.

A further sampling finds Los Angeles Kings GM Dean Lombardi and Minnesota Wild GM Chuck Fletcher both clocking in with 31 swaps during that period, while Nashville GM David Poile made 37 and Anaheim Ducks GM Bob Murray was responsible for a mind-boggling 55.

So yeah, Chevy is definitely in the slower lane when it comes to the trade market, but he’s not exactly stalled at the side of the road. And so what, anyway? More is not necessarily more — and not just at the buffet table.

Could he have made more deals over the years? Obviously. But you know what Chevy’s fellow GMs would have been demanding from this team, which arrived from Atlanta in 2011 with nothing in the cupboards, courtesy of the patient leadership of the Thrashers’ management? They’d have wanted Winnipeg’s draft picks.

So, let’s play out that scenario: tell me which of the following Cheveldayoff first-round picks he should have traded away over the years (in order): Mark Scheifele, Jacob Trouba, Josh Morrissey, Nikolaj Ehlers, Kyle Connor, Roslovic, Patrik Laine or Logan Stanley?

We’ll see what Roslovic and Stanley become, I suppose. And the jury’s also still out on Connor. But the rest are absolute grand-slams, at least a couple of which are potential hall of famers.

Say what you want about the man’s work in the trade market, you would be hard-pressed to find any GM in the league who has a higher batting average at the draft table than Cheveldayoff, and that’s not even including some notable later-round selections, such as Adam Lowry (third round, 2011); Connor Hellebuyck (fifth round, 2012); and Andrew Copp (fourth round, 2013).

But back to the deals Chevy has made. He’s authored some duds over the years, for sure — beginning with the second rounder he sent to Minnesota in 2013 for Devin Setoguchi.

Setoguchi proved to be a bust, by any measure; that 2014 second-round pick changed hands a couple times more before it finally landed in Washington, where Brian MacLellan used it to draft a Czech goalie named Vitek Vanacek, who was last year’s ECHL rookie goalie of the year and this season is sharing the starter’s job in Hershey with the Capitals’ AHL affiliate in Hershey, Pa.

Hmmm… know of anyone who could use some goaltending help?

And then there were a couple of good trades that Cheveldayoff made but then promptly squandered. Acquiring forward Lee Stempniak from the Rangers in exchange for Carl Klingberg in a deadline deal in 2015 was a steal for the Jets, if they’d kept Stempniak around. Instead, they let him walk at the end of that season, only to see him score 19 goals and 32 assists last year with Boston and New Jersey.

Stempniak has 10 goals and 17 assists with Carolina this year and that sound you hear at night is Cheveldayoff tossing and turning.

And then there was the trade in October 2014 that brought goalie Peter Budaj to Winnipeg in exchange for Eric Tangradi. Budaj never did play for the Jets, put up terrible numbers that season in St. John’s and the Jets also let him walk at season’s end.

They didn’t know that two years later, Budaj would take over the starting job for the L.A. Kings, where he has a 2.12 GAA, .917 save percentage and seven shutouts.

Think the Kings would trade Budaj for Tangradi today? Think the Jets could have made good use of Budaj in net this season? Alas.

But Chevy has also had success in the trade market, beginning with the deal last year that sent Andrew Ladd, Jay Harrison and Matt Fraser to the Blackhawks in exchange for Marko Dano and the first-round pick (18th overall) they used to select Stanley.

The jury is still out on what the Jets got in return for that deal, but Chevy’s decision to unload Ladd looks prescient today. The New York Islanders ultimately signed Ladd to a seven-year $38.5-million deal last summer and the former Jets captain has just 22 points in 56 games and is widely regarded as the biggest free-agent bust of the season.

And finally, there’s that increasingly enigmatic Kane deal. What looked for a long time like a very lopsided deal in Winnipeg’s favour looks a lot more equitable today.

Myers, the big piece in the deal for the Jets, is chronically injured. Stafford has been an occasional healthy scratch this season and Armia has been great some nights, invisible others. We’ll see what, if anything, Lemieux and Roslovic become. 

Meanwhile, in Buffalo, Bogosian has proven to be a steadying, if oft-injured, presence on the Sabres’ blue line and Kane has — for the time being, anyway — stopped getting arrested and started scoring again, notching 21 goals and 11 assists in 48 games this year.

But maybe, just maybe, the best trade of all that Chevy has made as Jets GM is the one he never made at all when Trouba was holding out last fall and seemingly everyone was reporting that a deal was imminent.

To his eternal and everlasting credit, Chevy looked Trouba and his delusional agent in the eyes and waited until they blinked.

Trouba has provided proof positive of the wisdom of that decision night after night this season, maturing quicker than anyone could have ever hoped into the elite defenceman the Jets always thought he would be.

They drafted Trouba, they developed Trouba and — when the chips were down — they found a way to keep Trouba in a Jets uniform. Chevy gets a lot of credit for all three.

You will hear lots of talk in the next few days about “buyers” and “sellers,” leading up to Wednesday’s deadline.

Chevy could surprise me, but his past performance says he will be what he’s always been — a maddeningly patient “investor.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek