Twists and turns for Jets as roster deadline looms Tight defenceman race stretches into final days of training camp By: Ken Wiebe Posted: 6:13 PM CDT Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025

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This article was published 01/10/2025 (385 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was less than two weeks ago when Kevin Cheveldayoff stood around a group of reporters and was asked to grade his performance during the off-season.

The general manager of the Winnipeg Jets paused briefly before making a crack about how reporters would soon be asking him about the NHL trade deadline, which is still roughly six months away.

Cheveldayoff also dropped a line that is even more apt right now than it was at the time.

“You just move on to the next thing and there’s always a next thing in the National Hockey League,” said Cheveldayoff. “In this game, you never stop. There’s always something. It’s not a defined off-season, a defined beginning of the season.”

It’s not like Cheveldayoff was looking into the crystal ball and envisioning trouble on the horizon. But the Jets GM has been around the block enough times to realize that every season brings its own twists and turns.

Being without captain Adam Lowry for the first few weeks of the campaign meant the Jets had already worked hard to bolster their depth up front during the off-season.

The next bit of adversity arrived earlier this week when Jets head coach Scott Arniel announced that shutdown D-man Dylan Samberg had suffered a broken wrist after taking a hit from Calgary Flames forward Ryan Lomberg during the second period of Saturday’s exhibition game.

Jonathan Toews left Tuesday’s game against the Minnesota Wild after “tweaking something,” and Arniel told the CJOB post-game show that he was to be evaluated further after the team returned home to Winnipeg.

Then, during the third period, Vlad Namestnikov was rocked from behind and into the boards by Wild forward Yakov Trenin. Arniel also told CJOB that Namestnikov had been pulled from the game by the concussion spotter but that he was fine.

The status of Toews should be updated on Thursday when the Jets return to the ice, but it would not be surprising if he was simply removed for precautionary reasons.

Although the Jets have been relatively healthy so far, groin issues or soft tissue injuries are commonplace at this time of the year — and not just for someone coming back from missing two NHL seasons for health-related reasons.

As the Jets await the injury news on Toews, it’s the time of training camp when the cuts get more difficult and watching the waiver wire becomes a bigger part of the roster-building process.

Finalizing the 23-man roster is top of mind for the management team and the coaching staff and will occupy a lot of time leading into Monday’s deadline.

For the sake of clarity, any player who requires waivers and won’t be on the opening-day roster must be exposed by Sunday afternoon.

The Jets made the latest round of cuts on Wednesday, placing defenceman Kale Clague and forwards Jaret Anderson-Dolan and Samuel Fagemo on waivers and reassigning goalie Thomas Milic, defenceman Elias Salomonsson and forwards Brayden Yager and Colby Barlow to the Manitoba Moose of the American Hockey League.

Aside from the personnel decisions, the Jets remain focused on negotiating a contract extension with top-line winger Kyle Connor, who figures to become the first member of the organization to ink a deal that includes an average annual value (AAV) above US$8.5 million.

That number could end up being north of $US12 million, especially after news that Kirill Kaprizov agreed to a deal that includes an AAV of US$17 million for eight years on Tuesday.

“In this game, you never stop. There’s always something. It’s not a defined off-season, a defined beginning of the season.”

While Cheveldayoff and cap connoisseur Larry Simmons work on the number crunching, Arniel spent some time this week test-driving some different line combinations and D pairings in practices and game action.

The exhibition season comes to a close on Friday when the Jets travel to Calgary to face the Flames.

From there, you can expect the Jets to do some team bonding on the weekend and then start ratcheting up things for next Thursday’s season opener against the Dallas Stars.

The Jets are getting down to the short strokes when it comes to the final cuts.

It’s safe to say that the players brought in to supply depth up front — coupled with the strong play of the prospects — have helped to make the decisions as difficult as possible.

Provided Toews isn’t going to miss significant time, Arniel and his coaching staff have a pretty good idea what the line combinations are going to be, but the biggest decision will come on defence where the loss of Samberg has complicated matters.

Instead of knowing for certain what the top two pairings were going to be and then figuring out how the rest of the players slot in for the top-8 (the most likely outcome right now), some mixing and matching might be required.

Wednesday’s moves make it likely that the Jets go with the path of least resistance and start the season with Haydn Fleury, Logan Stanley and Ville Heinola on the left side of the defence depth chart behind Josh Morrissey.

In the short term, all of Dylan DeMelo, Neal Pionk, Luke Schenn and Colin Miller could be under consideration for left-side duty as well.

It’s apparent that the idea of exposing an experienced D man to waivers in the coming days became far less appealing to the Jets after Samberg was sidelined.

There will surely be some angst among the fan base with the Salomonsson news, but there’s a chance this might just be temporary.

While it’s unfortunate that Salomonsson fell ill and missed out on playing a third exhibition game last week, the odds were stacked against him to make the club right out of the gate.

That doesn’t mean his NHL debut will be delayed for an extended period of time.

The decision to send Salomonsson back to the AHL will allow the Jets’ top prospect to go down to the Moose and play 20-plus minutes per game and build some confidence on his natural side.

After getting some games under his belt, recalling Salomonsson could definitely occur at some point before Samberg is set to return to game action — depending on how things go in the interim.

Up front, none of the top prospects boosted their stock more than Barlow has during the past several weeks.

He’s skating much better than he was at this point of training camp last fall and he was much more impactful in exhibition game action.

Barlow has a nose for the net and a propensity to go to the hard areas and find open space to get his heavy shot off.

For both Barlow and Yager, it’s merely a matter of time and working through the adjustment to the professional game before they’re working their way into the conversation for recall duty.

The biggest battle for a roster spot remaining up front revolves around Tanner Pearson, David Gustafsson, Parker Ford, Nikita Chibrikov, Brad Lambert and Walker Duehr competing for two or, at maximum, three forward jobs.

Injuries are a part of the game, which is why Cheveldayoff spent a good chunk of the off-season bringing in additional depth — both to help insulate and lead those players in the AHL and to fill in on the big club when opportunities like this present themselves.

ken.wiebe@freepress.mb.ca

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