Wheeler confident Jets on right track

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/09/2014 (4387 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BLAKE Wheeler has five more years on his contract with the Winnipeg Jets and when it’s over he’ll be 33, moving into the back end of his career.

Think he wants the Jets to contend and contend soon? Likely more than you and any of your season ticket holder friends.

Draft and develop, the mantra of Jets management, may grate the man on the street. But for Wheeler and his teammates it’s their lot in life.

“I re-signed here to win,” said Wheeler, during a discussion early Monday afternoon following a practice made up of a handful of Jets veterans. “I’ve got a lot of confidence in what we’re trying to do.”

Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff stated on the day he took this job he would use the draft-and-develop method to build this team and he hasn’t wavered. The fruits of his plan have begun to add to the Jets roster, with Mark Scheifele and Jacob Trouba cracking the lineup last season and Adam Lowry closing in on a spot this season.

Prospects such as Nic Petan, Nik Ehlers and Josh Morrissey have also shown it’s only a matter of time before they come on stream to bolster this roster.

Wheeler and his teammates can now see the future. Like most of the people in this town, they’d like it to arrive now, but understand it doesn’t work like that, especially in a small market with a payroll budget.

“I think it’s a great thing for any organization to have that depth, to have guys that you can look at, and if it’s not today, it’s very soon. There are kids in this camp that can be impact players. I think they’ve done a really solid job through the draft of acquiring young players like (Michael) Frolik and (Mathieu) Perrault to build depth within our organization,” said Wheeler. “Now to see the young guys and how close they are, it’s all coming a little more into focus.”

Players being players and wanting to win immediately makes what GMs view as a development stage painful. Every season has the potential to turn into something special.

“We had some guys that did some good things last year but from top to bottom we need to improve. From the guy at the top of the depth chart to the guy at the bottom there needs to be an improvement,” said Wheeler. “I think as a group we all need to play better. It looks daunting from an outsider’s perspective, but we were in a lot of games and we didn’t have everyone going, so if we get everyone going, I think we can do some damage.”

The Jets remain among the youngest teams in the NHL and they need to learn as a group what it takes to do the daily things that result in a season of success. Last season they spent some time in Banff on a team-building exercise and came out of it talking about accountability and holding one another to a higher standard. It never materialized.

“Accountability, what you find as you get a little bit older in this league, is actions speak louder than words,” said Wheeler. “I mean you can go on retreats all you want and say whatever you want to each other to make yourself feel good but it doesn’t really matter if you’re not doing that on the ice. I think that’s what we learned last year.

“You can talk the talk in the media, at Banff or wherever but you if your play is not measuring up to those same standards then it doesn’t carry a whole a lot of weight.”

gary.lawless@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @garylawless