Mark Scheifele Jets Nation year in review

Welcome to my third year of doing the season-end “Jets Nation year in review” series to wrap up the Winnipeg Jets season. This is a series where I take a look individually at the seasons of the Winnipeg Jets players, recapping their year while looking ahead to the 2026-27 season. Some of the depth players or prospects will get lumped together in a future article, but today we’re starting off with easily the best Jets player from the 2025-26 season: Mark Scheifele.

After a heartbreaking end to Scheifele’s 2024-25 season, the Jets first line centre took the off-season to reset in preparation for this season. After hitting several milestones last season, Scheifele further cemented his Jets legacy throughout the 2025-26 season. Perhaps the most notable of the handful of milestones Scheifele achieved this season was setting the most points (in a career) for a Jets 2.0 player in history. This milestone was achieved early in the season, and now Scheifele has 907 career points as a Jet, 95 more than the 2nd place Blake Wheeler. Near the end of the season, Scheifele became the first Jets 2.0 player in history to reach 100+ points in a season.

It still doesn’t really feel like Scheifele just completed his 13th full year in the NHL with the Jets. The 33-year old from Kitchener, Ontario is on the path to retiring as a Jet, and he’s already had so many memorable moments since he made his NHL debut in the 2011-12 season. Fast forward to the 2025-26 season, where Scheifele continued to play his 1st line centre role. Alongside Scheifele was his trusty linemates Kyle Connor and either Gabriel Vilardi or Alex Iafallo. Both trios improved their already fantastic chemistry together this season, and it’s extremely likely one of these combos will be the top line again season.

Scheifele appeared in all 82 regular season games for the 2nd straight season, scoring 36 goals and adding 67 assists for 103 points. In terms of goals, Scheifele was six shy of his career high of 42 from back in the 2022-23 season, but his 67 assists and 103 points were easily career highs. Scheifele’s penalty minutes (43) were a dip down from last season which is always nice to see, and another notable stat was that Scheifele’s +/- rating was 0. This even number was a result of both being on the ice for more goals against, while balancing it out by being on the ice for Jets goals more often.

As the Jets weren’t in the playoffs, Scheifele took his talents over to Team Canada for the IIHF World Championship in Switzerland, where he had a solid tournament with 3 goals and 4 assists for 7 points in 10 games. Now officially in his off-season, Scheifele can rest up after an excellent A+ season. Scheifele’s contract situation continues to look very good for the Jets, as he’s signed with the team with a matching contract to Connor Hellebuyck’s until the end of the 2030-31 season. Scheifele’s $8.5 million cap hit looks very reasonable when you look at his excellent production, and the salary cap will be going up enough over the next few seasons to soon make his contract look even better.

To say that Scheifele’s 2025-26 season was a success would be an understatement. Despite the Jets not making the playoffs, Scheifele did everything he could throughout the season to give the team a chance at winning on a nightly basis. There was less than a handful of games the whole season where Scheifele made no noticeable impact, and you can only except the same thing to happen going into an important 2026-27 season. Looking ahead to next season, Scheifele will hopefully have a new 2nd line forward that can join him up on the Jets top powerplay unit in a four forward, one defenceman set up. Whatever the Jets roster looks like next season, you can count on Scheifele being there as the number one centre, and he’ll be ready to do whatever it takes to get the Jets back in the playoffs.

Up Next

The 2026 NHL Draft will take place at the KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York on June 26th and June 27th. The Winnipeg Jets will be selecting 8th overall in the first round. Stay tuned for the next edition of the Jets Nation “year in review” series article coming in a few days!

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