Jets’ brain trust comes up short on the ice

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/03/2017 (3163 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The goal for National Hockey League teams is having a club that competes in the Stanley Cup playoffs on a regular basis and wins a championship once in a while.

The Winnipeg Jets have a trio of leaders who are attempting to teach a mix of young and old players how to be that type of team. Let’s have a closer look at the hierarchy of the team to see if they are capable of accomplishing the task.

 

Head coach Paul Maurice

I wrote earlier this season about Maurice, pointing out my displeasure with the systems he’s installed — especially the defensive zone design.

His player deployment is often questioned; most recently when he sat young Nic Petan in favour of Chris Thorburn (against Nashville) in what was basically a meaningless game, as far as making the playoffs go. The development of youth has been used as a major excuse for the poor results this year — you can’t have it both ways.

How does one justify Patrik Laine being on a secondary power play unit when he is known as one of the most lethal threats in the NHL to score every time he shoots? Build the first unit around him — or is it so simple it defies logic?

Responsibility for poor special teams and discipline (penalties, etc.) are laid upon coaches elsewhere, and should be here too.

Maurice operates just above the .500 line in winning percentage for his long career. I previously called him an average NHL coach, which means there are better out there — and worse, as well.

He’s a teacher but is hardly a closer who inspires hopes of championships.

 

General manager Kevin Cheveldayoff

He hasn’t done a lot this season — his first big move was signing Jacob Trouba for two years (huge) and then he grabbed a conditional sixth-round draft pick for Drew Stafford at the trade deadline.

The club could have evaporated during the early part of the season because of some critical injuries to its forwards, in particular. They were able to hang in the race while dancing around the .500 mark because Cheveldayoff’s draft picks from past years were called up from the Manitoba Moose and held the fort.

With those injured forwards back in the lineup, the Jets have lost four in a row and sit at 30-33-7 for 67 points in 70 games going into Thursday night’s game against the New York Islanders.

While injuries and suspensions on defence have hurt lately, Tyler Myers was out while the Jets were better (or at least as good) as this record back in those good old days, so nothing has really changed.

Cheveldayoff has done well at hiring a good scouting staff and has built a talented group of young players and prospects. He, like all GMs, has had good and bad times in transactions.

Cheveldayoff was forced by his players to trade Evander Kane and received a good haul from Buffalo, considering the spot he was in. He made a great trade for Michael Frolik from Chicago, and then lost him for nothing in unrestricted free agency.

The poor results of the past two years can’t be totally ignored, nor can one playoff spot in six seasons (barring a miracle finish).

One can wonder about how effective the older core of players will be when the youth movement finally jells; this club could make a jump next year by shoring up the goaltending and defence with a few strong moves.

With so many question marks, I can’t look to him to be a closer of the “big deal” at this point.

 

 

Owner Mark Chipman

Obviously a closer in his regular business dealings that led to him getting into the professional hockey business, he went from part-ownership in the original Manitoba Moose to partnering with billionaire David Thomson. Those two acquired the Atlanta Thrashers franchise and moved them to Winnipeg.

When you’re hanging out with that kind of company and succeeding, you’re definitely a great closer.

However, running the business side of hockey is vastly different than the hockey operations side, and the question is whether he can make the hard, correct hockey decisions to get to the ultimate prize.

Chipman unintentionally invited questions about his involvement in day-to-day hockey decisions when he said that he and Cheveldayoff speak on a daily basis about the team — other NHL owners who were quoted at the time did not have that much interaction with their GMs.

He’s also a huge fan — like many owners who’ve bought sports teams because of their fondness for a team or a league. The tough part for a number of them has been separating the fan part of themselves from the hard, business side of them that allowed them to acquire the team in the first place.

I agreed with the owner’s assertion that he would wait until this summer to seriously evaluate everybody — but media “insiders” are telling us the deal for contract extensions for Cheveldayoff and Maurice are written in stone and have been for a while.

If that is a fact, then I see it as something a fan would do, and the organizational structure would look more like a rotating triangle with the three main characters, not a top-down hierarchy as one would expect.

If that is true, count me doubtful of them ever closing the big deal.

 

 

 

Chosen ninth overall by the NHL’s St. Louis Blues and first overall by the WHA’s Houston Aeros in 1977, Scott Campbell has now been drafted by the Winnipeg Free Press to play a new style of game.

Twitter: @NHL_Campbell