What the Hellebuyck is going on? Actually, there’s no surprise why Jets are Canada’s best

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/11/2017 (2854 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

So here’s a proposition that would have been preposterous barely a month ago: Winnipeg Jets, the best hockey team in Canada.

Believe it.

A team that is, as of Wednesday morning, sixth in the NHL standings, third in the Western Conference and second in the Central Division is also, by a lot of measures, No. 1 in Canada.

With a record of 6-1-3 in their last 10, which includes a 4-1 win Tuesday night over the Arizona Coyotes at Bell MTS Place, only the Tampa Bay Lightning and New York Rangers are banking points at a faster clip than the Jets right now.

And while the Toronto Maple Leafs have one more point in the standings than the Jets as of this morning, the Leafs have also played two more games, meaning no team north of the 49th parallel has been more proficient so far this season at converting games into points.

Hands up if you saw that coming six weeks ago? Liar.

While there’s all kinds of wise guys today who will tell you they’d predicted this for the Jets, there’s a reason bookmakers at the start of the season had the Jets as the second longest shots in Canada to win the Stanley Cup this season, their 50-1 odds better than only the 75-1 Vancouver Canucks.

Those two teams, not coincidentally, were also the only two teams in Canada not to make the NHL playoffs last season. With all kinds of lingering questions about the Jets goaltending heading into this season, there were a lot of people who thought the playoffs would be a tall order for Winnipeg again this year.

Well, what a difference six weeks — and some great goaltending — has made.

The most reliable predictor of whether an NHL team will make the playoffs has long been whether that team is already in a playoff position come U.S. Thanksgiving and with Turkey Thursday just a week away, it’s now a foregone conclusion the Jets will be above that line.

Now, nobody ever won a Stanley Cup in November and you only have to consult a Bombers fan this week to find out how quickly and how far a once high-flying team can fall as the season wears on.

But in a season in which a lot of people thought it would be the Edmonton Oilers who might finally end Canada’s 24-year Stanley Cup drought, it’s actually the Jets that are making the best case at the moment.

There’s a lot of things working for the Jets right now, starting with a top line that includes — in Blake Wheeler (sixth) and Mark Scheifele (eleventh) — two of the top 15 scorers in the NHL.

They’ve been as good on the road (5-2-1) as they’ve been at home (5-2-2); they’ve been perfect in a very tough Central Division (4-0-0); and a once anemic power play that bedevilled this team for years is now clicking at the seventh highest rate in the league thanks to a sniper in Patrik Laine, who is tied for third in the NHL in power play goals with five.

And it’s amazing what a difference having six healthy, NHL calibre defencemen has meant to this team. Yes, Buff still wanders too much. No, Dmitri Kulikov is no Paul Coffey.

But as a group, the Jets blueliners have been more than serviceable and, most nights, part of the solution instead of part of the problem, which isn’t something you could say very often in the past.

Here’s a stat that tells you a lot about the job the Jets defence has done this year — the club is 7-2-3 this season when they’ve been outshot, which speaks volumes about the quality of shots the Jets defencemen are forcing teams to take.

But the biggest difference — and difference-maker — has, of course, been the goaltending.

I figured as far back as last season that there was nothing so wrong with this Jets team that a decent goaltender couldn’t fix. What I never expected, however, was that they had that goaltender all along in Connor Hellebuyck.

Hellebuyck was sensational — again — Tuesday night, turning away 33 of 34 shots to bump his season save percentage to a sizzling .930.

That’s 23 points higher than last year and those few extra saves have been the difference night after night for the Jets this year. With Hellebuyck in net this season, the Jets are a cool 9-1-2, which translates into an incredible 20 of 24 possible points.

Throw in a backup in Steve Mason who has improved markedly in his last couple outings after a disastrous Jets debut in early October and the Jets goaltending has gone from the single worst part of this franchise to the single best part this season.

And the rest of the hockey world is beginning to take notice.

The folks over at TSN.ca this week listed the Jets third overall on their weekly power rankings, behind just the Lightning and St. Louis Blues.

Now, a thumbs-up from TSN plus five bucks will buy you a coffee at Starbucks, but it’s worth mentioning simply because when the Toronto Sports Network is noticing what’s happening in Winnipeg, it’s because we’ve become impossible to ignore any longer.

With the Oilers and Habs struggling early this season, the Leafs without an injured Auston Matthews and every other team in Canada dealing with one issue or another, the Jets have very quietly — at least until now — become the best story in Canadian hockey.

Is it sustainable? I have no idea.

The penalty kill is still not a strong point — Winnipeg is 19th in the league — and there’s some numbers this team is putting up right now that just seem unsustainable.

Scheifele, for instance, has scored this season on a mind boggling 28.6 per cent of his shots. No one in the league with as many shots as Scheifele — 35 — is within three points of that conversion rate.

And then there’s all those assists for Wheeler, who with 18 helpers already this year trails just Steven Stamkos, who for my money is the best playmaker in hockey right now. Wheeler is a fine player who appears to be having a career year, but colour me skeptical that he can keep pace with a guy like Stamkos over 82 games.

And yet, who knows? I never saw coming what the Jets have already done this season, mostly because I never saw them getting this kind of goaltending. And yet here we are, approaching the 20-game mark and the Jets are the best team in Canada.

Believe it?

That’s up to you. But I will leave you with this:

It’s no longer unbelievable.

email: paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek