The National Hockey League’s trade deadline for the 2025-26 campaign has come and gone, seeing our Winnipeg Jets become sellers for the first time in a while. General Manager Kevin Cheveldayoff ended up shipping out a few veterans in Logan Stanley, Luke Schenn, & Tanner Pearson for packages that included a couple of player and picks.
Both skaters acquired from the Buffalo Sabres are going to make their debuts for the True North franchise tonight when Winnipeg squares off against the Vancouver Canucks on Saturday evening. The fans at the Canada Life Centre will get to welcome forward Isak Rosen and defenseman Jacob Bryson to the province of Manitoba, as the two players begin the next stage in their NHL careers. I think it will be very interesting to see #27 on a Winnipeg Jets’ jersey again, as that is the digit that Rosen will be wearing. If the young Swede can come close to replacing the clubs’ former #27 (Ehlers), then he will quickly find a spot in the hearts of the fanbase, but that could be too high of expectations on the kid.
Yesterday, Chevy had indicated in his press conference that the Jets will be doing their best to get some of the organizational youth slotted into the line up over the rest of the regular season, but the number of players that can be recalled is limited to 5. Two of those slots have been used on Rosen and fellow forward prospect Brad Lambert, while other Moose players like Elias Salomonsson & Ville Heinola are expected to remain with Winnipeg for the rest of the year. Somewhat surprisingly, the front office didn’t send Ville down to the AHL on the trade deadline, so he is the only one of these players that won’t be eligible for the minor league playoffs. The Jets’ GM also mentioned that he would like to see other prospects like Brayden Yager and Tyrel Bauer get rewarded with some NHL playing time, so it will be interesting to see how things play out over the final 21 contests.
Time to switch over to discuss the two franchises that will be meeting in the Peg tonight…….
Winnipeg (25-26-10) is sitting with the NHL’s 6th worst record this year, with the 9th worst offense (175 GF) and the 14th best defense (187 GA).
Vancouver (19-36-7) are the league’s worst club, with the 5th worst offense (163 GF) and the NHL’s most porous defense (233 GA).
Here is how the two clubs’ year-to-date stats compare, via ESPN‘s team & goaltender comparison numbers:
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The Winnipeg Jets rarely have a statistical advantage of against the opposition this season, but tonight will be a rare exception. The Vancouver Canucks only hold a slight lead in one category, powerplay success rate.
I am a bit disappointed by how the Jets have slotted in the young prospects for tonight’s match, as I think high-end talent forwards like Rosen & Lambert should be given a chance to play with Winnipeg’s top players, but that won’t be the case in Game 1 of the “youth movement“. Here are the line up projections for both clubs via PuckPedia and you can let me know your thoughts about them in the Comment section:
WINNIPEG JETS LINE UP
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VANCOUVER CANUCKS LINE UP
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A 6 pm Central start will see Winnipeg & Vancouver kick off their game and both teams will be looking to extend winning streaks. The Jets have gotten points in their last 5 matches, winning the 2 most recent ones, while the Canucks ended a 7 game losing streak last night versus the Chicago Blackhawks.
Alright….I am way behind schedule on this site (haven’t even updated the stats from the last game, I just realized)…..so I will sign off now. Feel free to join me here to discuss tonight’s hockey action. Might feel more like an AHL game, or perhaps an NHL pre-season game with all the youth involved on both squads…but that is the post-trade deadline reality for sellers like the Jets & Canucks.
Go Winnipeg Jets!!!!!
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POST-GAME INFO
Scoring Summary: (courtesy of ESPN)
FINAL SCORE:
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Game Stats: (courtesy of MoneyPuck)
Expected Goals (all):
Expected Goals (5on5):
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BOJA’S Post-Game Thoughts:
Post-game stuff will be updated around 10 pm tonight as the only thing I am planning on doing tonight is chill out, eat Chinese food, and watch hockey. Enjoy your weekend everyone!!!
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Was a bit bored this afternoon and decided to re-draft the Winnipeg Jets’ 2019 to 2021 drafts to see what perfect picks would have made the club’s line up look like. Out of the 3 drafts, I only kept one player that was selected by Chevy & company….and even that one could easily be different. I opted to keep the Cole Perfetti selection, a choice that many will disagree with, but I think the talented playmaker would fit in very well in the 2nd line my “elite” drafting built. I did keep Cheveldayoff’s trade of Dubois to LA and his most recent transaction involving Stanley & Schenn though.
Unfortunately, drafting that well comes with a cost and the Jets’ line up below is almost $13M over the salary cap. Some of that can be reduced by the fact that I wouldn’t have re-signed Iafallo to that $3.7M contract, but the GM would still need to make further cuts like Pionk & others.
The Winnipeg coaching staff would have some options to promote prospects on entry level contracts to help cut costs too….here is what the organizational depth chart would have looked like this season if I included re-drafts all the way from 2019 to 2024 (I ended up keeping more Jets’ actual picks as we got closer to real time since the prospects’ potential haven’t been reached yet. I also re-drafted Rutger McGroarty again, just to trade him to Pittsburgh for Brendan Yager like Chevy did).
Winnipeg would have had some very promising young players outside of NHL that easily could be in the big leagues, especially a guy like Lane Hutson, but other current full time NHLers like Jackson Blake, Mikael Pyyhtia, and Otto Stenberg as well.
It is pretty crazy how easily a GM with a crystal ball could build up their organizational depth in a hurry, right? Would you have still picked a player like Seth Jarvis or Anton Lundell over Cole Perfetti? How would you arrange the lines? After moving Alex Iafallo out, how would you go about finding the $9M needed to get under the salary cap? Who would be promoted to take their place?
Just a sideline discussion topic for the Comment section in case the game isn’t too exciting.