The Winnipeg Jets are one of the hottest teams in the National Hockey League. First, it was Kyle Connor putting the league on notice when he led the league in goals, now it’s the rest of the team following suit.
They have won eight of their last nine games including five straight, and in 13 out of their last 15 games they have secured at least a point. This team is playing at an incredible pace right now, and they have overcome these three issues from early in the season to get to this point.
Nikolaj Ehlers & Connor Hellebuyck Have Shed Slow Starts
One early-season issue, which is a normal one to see around the league, is individual players having a slow start. For the Jets, that happened to be Nikolaj Ehlers and Connor Hellebuyck. It wasn’t costing them games, but it was something to monitor. Now just 19 games into the season, it seems as though both have turned the corner.
In Hellebuyck’s case, his slow start resulted in some uncharacteristic numbers, but it has started to climb more and more as the season has gone on. His save percentage is now up to .907 percent coming off of two strong performances against the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers, with his most recent performance being a 32-save shutout. According to Money Puck, Hellebuyck is now 11th in the NHL in goals saved above expected (GSAx), with 4.8. After being well outside the top 25 for the majority of the season, Hellebuyck has completely turned his season around as of late.
Not many people were expecting those numbers to carry on for Hellebuyck, but he has completely flipped the script over his past three starts and looks to be back on track to be among the NHL’s best in net. This could prove to be an extremely dynamic combo, as Hellebuyck’s talent along with Winnipeg’s five-on-five defence could prove to be unstoppable against the league’s mediocre teams.
Another player who has turned their slow start around is Nikolaj Ehlers. He’s got four goals in his last five games, and his latest goal against the Panthers was a thing of beauty. That goal only happens from a player playing with extreme confidence, and it seems Ehlers has re-gained that as of late.
A healthy Ehlers changes the dynamic of the Jets’ forward group. Headlines have been dominated by Connor leading the NHL in goals, or Captain Adam Lowry’s line having an incredible start, and that second line with Ehlers, Vladislav Namestnikov, and Cole Perfetti took a while to get going.
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Now they are starting to fill the stat sheet, and the analytics back that up. They have an expected goals percentage (xG%) of 52.1 percent and have outscored their opponents 9-3 at five-on-five.
Special Teams Units are Beginning to Turn a Corner for the Better
I sat down with Jets defenceman Brenden Dillon for a Q&A session earlier last week, and he provided some insight into the teams’ struggling penalty kill. He said: “Yeah, we’ve started really slow. It’s been disappointing for us, like you said a strength of last year, and we’ve lost some big parts of our penalty kill like Saku Maenalanen and Kevin Stenlund, those are big pieces, and on the PK, it’s similar to goal-scoring in a way that it’s an ability and a skill.”
Related: Q&A with Jets’ Brenden Dillon: Improving the Penalty Kill
It has been slow in getting there, but the special teams’ units seem to be turning a corner for the better. The Jets penalty kill is still a lowly 73.8 percent, but that number has risen from their early season struggles.
Everyone knew how badly the power play was struggling, as they had a stretch of 0-20 across multiple games and against good opponents to open the season. Their power play is now 18.5 percent, which is just below league average, but they have cleared the low bar that they set early on.
Connor has been a huge reason for that unit turning it around, along with Mark Scheifele and Josh Morrissey finding a way to score deflection goals on shots from the point. That unit has become less predictable over the past two weeks, and that has resulted in a better percentage with the man-advantage.
If the Jets are able to get their special teams’ units to league-average, or even slightly above, they can combine that with their elite five-on-five metrics and be known as a defensive juggernaut in the Western Conference.
Defensive-Zone Turnovers Have Become Less of a Factor
Early on in the season, the Jets’ defensive core was extremely prone to turning the puck over in their own zone. It cost them goals against and even cost them a few wins when facing good opponents.
The majority of those turnovers came from Nate Schmidt, who has been healthy scratched a few times early on in this season for Logan Stanley. If we take a look at Money Puck’s tracking, the third-pairing of Dylan Samberg and Schmidt is atop the league in expected goals against on a per 60-minute basis. A lot of factors go into that, but for the time being, they have cut out the back-breaking turnovers in the defensive zone.
That stat is even more proof that Samberg is having a fantastic season, and he’s not the only one on that blue line doing so. Morrissey has followed up his 2022-23 campaign nicely alongside Dylan DeMelo, and Neal Pionk has quietly put together a bounce-back season. The Jets’ defence core has taken plenty of heat over the past two seasons, but there isn’t much bad to say early on in 2023-24.
The Jets will look to keep up their winning ways against the Nashville Predators on Sunday, Nov 26th, where they will go for their sixth straight win and ninth out of their last 10. They are one of the hottest teams across the entire NHL as they will look to sweep their three-game road trip.