Coming into the season, expectations were low for the Winnipeg Jets. They weren’t expected to be as bad as a club like Edmonton or Buffalo, but with very little improvement over the summer, and a roster riddled with flaws, it was expected to be the usual business in Winnipeg. Yet, as we near the calendar turning to January, the Jets are right in the thick of things in the gauntlet that is the Western Conference. Currently sitting in fifth, the Jets are far surpassing whatever expectations were laid out for them at the beginning of the year.
It’s not as if this is a team that lacks talent. They’ve always had a decent enough stable of players that made them intriguing, if not at least watchable. Dustin Byfuglien, Evander Kane, Andrew Ladd, and Blake Wheeler are all notable among their group of forwards, as well as the likes of Bryan Little and Michael Frolik, who have also played well. There is some talent evident on their blue line as well, including Jacob Trouba and Zach Bogosian, though the defensive corps is where their true weakness may actually lie.
In goal, they’re getting better production than they could have expected, mostly thanks to the emergence of Michael Hutchinson, rather than improvements from Ondrej Pavelec. Pavelec has been average, but in 13 starts on the year, Hutchinson has been extremely impressive, going for a 1.87 goals against average and very strong .937 save percentage. That includes two starts against the mighty Chicago Blackhawks in which he allowed just one goal between the two contests.
The numbers that the Jets have managed on the year are quite intriguing, and do help to give some sort of explanation as to how the Jets have earned their current standing in the Western Conference. While they’re just 22nd in the league in goals per game, they’re third in the league in goals against per game, helping them to a plus-7 goal differential on the year, in addition to the seventh best penalty kill in the league. They allow less shot attempts than all but six teams, which helps to give at least a bit of insight as to how they’ve managed to find success.
Winnipeg’s possession numbers really stack up quite well compared to the rest of the league. In terms of Corsi, they’re seventh in the league in Corsi For%, at a 53.2 figure on the year. It’s not that they’re running away in the shot attempt department in every game, but more often than not, they are generating more shot attempts than their opponents. They don’t block a ton of shots either, as they only rank 13th in the league in that category. For a team that ranks 14th in the league in shots per game themselves, they’re simply very good at playing in a system that suppresses shots for the opposition.
That’s where we can attribute the majority of their success. They don’t find a ton of opportunities themselves and they don’t score a lot of goals (Andrew Ladd and Blake Wheeler are their leading scorers each with 27 points in 37 games). What they do well is play a physical game (seventh in the league in hits) and a system that helps to prevent opposing shot attempts. That, in addition to playing extremely well on the road, where they’re 11-4-4 on the year, is why the Winnipeg Jets are currently fifth in the Western Conference.
If the general tone of this all suggests surprise, it’s because this was a team that was expected to finish somewhere in the neighborhood of 10th or 11th in the standings out west. It could still happen, as there’s a lot of season left, but while the Jets don’t have the talent that some of the other clubs in the conference do, they’re the type of team that can be very difficult to play against, particularly as we get down the stretch. Although they’ll have to do it without Evander Kane for a stretch, and still need help on the blue line, this team likely isn’t going anywhere. They’ll make some noise in the spring time in at least fighting for a playoff spot, if not sneakily grabbing one by the end of the regular season.
