Offseason Keys: Winnipeg Jets

The offseason is now in full swing with the draft now complete and free agency on the horizon.  What storylines lie ahead around the league in the weeks to come?  Our Offseason Keys series continues with a look at the Winnipeg Jets.

The Jets had quite the turnaround in 2017-18.  After missing the postseason the year before, everything started to come together nicely which pushed them back towards the playoff picture.  GM Kevin Cheveldayoff then added center Paul Stastny at the deadline to make a run.  They did just that as they made it all the way to the Western Conference Final before being ousted by Vegas.  Don’t expect them to be too active on the free agent market, however, as the keys to their offseason all pertain to dealing with their current roster.

Extension Talks

There aren’t many teams that have more prominent players than Winnipeg does when it comes to signing early extensions.  The Jets have no fewer than three core forwards that will be entering the final year of their contracts on July 1st and it’s reasonable to think that the team is going to want to have some talks with all three to at the very least get a sense of how much they need to set aside in the budget moving forward.  (And this doesn’t even factor in defenseman Tyler Myers, who also is set to enter the final year of his deal.)

Winger Blake Wheeler is the lone unrestricted free agent of the three and is going to have quite the leverage to work with.  He led the team in points this past season with 91, good for ninth overall in the league while his 68 assists tied for the league lead.  He has logged heavy minutes on their top line for years now and he’s also their captain.  Put that all together and Wheeler is a player that will be one of the most sought-after wingers if he makes it to the open market next summer.  He’ll be 33 when that contract begins so a max-term deal is unlikely but five or six years at a rate considerably higher than his current $5.6MM cap hit is likely.

Fellow winger Kyle Connor didn’t see a lot of NHL time in his rookie year but became a key contributor pretty quickly in his sophomore campaign as he posted 31 goals and 26 assists in 76 games.  If the team believes this is a sign of things to come, they may want to act now…at least in theory.  Depending on what happens with some of their other pending free agents, Winnipeg may be forced to hand him a bridge deal to free up some extra cap room for 2019-20.  If that is indeed the case, that could wind up deferring any substantial talks as it’s quite rare for a player to sign a bridge contract a year earlier than they need to.

Then there’s winger Patrik Laine.  The second overall pick in 2016 has lived up to his billing and has already become one of the elite snipers in the league.  After Buffalo’s Jack Eichel landed a $10MM AAV on an early extension last offseason, it’s safe to assume that his deal will be used for a benchmark.  While Eichel plays the more premium position, the salary cap is higher now than it was a year ago so those two factors will largely offset.  Is that a contract that the Jets are comfortable handing out after just 172 career games (regular season and playoffs combined)?  Whether they do it now or a year from now, his salary is going to jump tenfold.

Determine Trouba’s Future

Two years ago, it looked like defenseman Jacob Trouba was on the outs in Winnipeg.  Unhappy with being asked to play on the left side and seemingly unable to come to terms on a contract following the expiration of his entry-level deal, he asked for a trade.  Eventually, the two sides agreed on a two-year bridge deal which expires on Saturday so a new deal needs to be worked out.

Trouba has arbitration eligibility this time around so unless he opts not to file and the team elects not to take him to a hearing, it can be said at the very least that there won’t be a holdout that lasts into the season this time around.

That said, this could still be a tricky negotiation.  His platform season saw him miss 27 games due to injury while his ice time was cut by more than three minutes a night.  Given his play the year before, Trouba is going to be looking to be paid as a number two or three defender but the logjam on the right side still exists.  Myers still has a year left on his deal while Dustin Byfuglien is locked up through 2020-21.  If they don’t want to shift one to the left on a full-time basis, then they’re going to be paying big money to a third pairing defender.  Given what they’re up against contractually already this summer (goalie Connor Hellebuyck is a key player to re-up as well), that’s going to be tough.

A long-term deal is certainly the preferred way to go here for either side.  If they can lock the 24-year-old up at a rate around Myers’ $5.5MM, I think both sides will be happy.  If that doesn’t get it done though, then there’s a chance that they’ll pivot back to looking to lock up Myers instead and look to trade Trouba.  His future with the Jets is certainly more stable than it was two summers ago but it’s not carved in stone just yet.

Clear Long-Term Cap Room

If you’ve been reading along and thinking to yourself that Winnipeg is going to have a tough time trying to keep this team together, you’re not the only one.  Cheveldayoff has already acknowledged that they’re going to be tight to the cap…and that’s for the 2018-19 season as they look to find a way to keep Stastny in the fold.  For the year after that, something has to give.

On the surface, forward Mathieu Perreault looks like a potential casualty.  Talk of his potential departure dates back to the Expansion Draft when it wasn’t a guarantee that he’d be protected and with the young talent in their system, his presence is rather superfluous.  He has a manageable $4.15MM cap hit through 2020-21 and would fit in nicely as a middle-six forward for a lot of teams and his positional flexibility is certainly an asset.  Moving him would yield some assets in return and free up some wiggle room.

The question becomes what to do if that’s not enough, especially looking ahead a year?  Beyond Perreault, only six other players are signed and the only other non-core piece is blueliner Dmitry Kulikov who looks to be untradeable at the moment following a rough injury-plagued first season in Winnipeg.  If they have to slash more payroll, it’s going to have to be a core piece that moves out.  They can probably get away with punting this decision for a little bit but any moves that the Jets make in the next year are going to have to be made with this situation in mind.  In the meantime, finding a new home for Perreault may very well be on the immediate to-do list for Cheveldayoff.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.