Jets culture issues? Trading veterans? Promoting prospects? Mailbag

Publish date: 2024-06-02

Barry Trotz continues his interview tour, following Winnipeg with stops in Philadelphia, Vegas, Detroit and Dallas.

The methodical Trotz won’t rush his decision, which has the potential to go well beyond coaching and into the beginnings of a career in management. He’ll think every option through for himself and his family.

When all is said and done, he’ll have multiple offers for his services, but rest assured: Winnipeg remains a viable option to land Trotz. I expect he’s No. 1 on the Jets’ list and, while they continue to interview other candidates, Winnipeg will wait to see if Trotz is on board before making its next move.

If so, then the Jets will have landed the top free agent on the coaching market.

If not, then Pascal Vincent, Scott Arniel and others see their odds go up.

Winnipeg’s next head coach — whoever it ends up being — will inherit a team that left many questions unanswered this season.

Why did Paul Maurice suddenly exit the team? Why did so many Jets players publicly question Winnipeg’s culture and accountability throughout the season?

This mailbag goes deeper into some familiar territory, taking your most liked questions from our callout and thinking them through. You didn’t toss up any softballs or leave any easy outs and I’ve done my best to honour that in thinking through my replies.

With thoughts on James Patrick, Mark Scheifele, Blake Wheeler, how to make room for Jets youth without sacrificing a “win now” mentality and more, here is Part 1 of May’s mailbag.

Note: Submitted questions may be edited for clarity and style.

Hey Murat, what are your thoughts on the comments James Patrick made on the Jets dressing room problems going back five years and Cody Eakin and Kevin Hayes calling it the worst room they’ve been in. We’ve heard speculation and rumours to this effect for years but hearing it come from someone like James Patrick hits different, no? — J M. (and Gerald T.)

For anyone missing the context on this, J M. frames James Patrick’s comments from his May interview with former NHL player Tom Laidlaw fairly accurately.

The interview has since been removed from Laidlaw’s YouTube page but clips persist on the internet. Winnipeg Sports Talk discussed it on their May 9 episode, which included the following pertinent clip:

Silly people. You can’t just delete stuff on the internet and pretend it never happened. pic.twitter.com/HLtcxrzFnX

— Faith (@RyanGJ8) May 10, 2022

Patrick speaks to rumours that Scheifele and Wheeler lead a fractured team in Winnipeg.

“For five years here, it’s been a divided dressing room,” Patrick says.

He then cites Eakin and Hayes, saying both former Jets called Winnipeg’s dressing room “the worst dressing room they’d ever been in.”

Patrick says he was told that “two players were above the team.” He also says, “half the guys follow one side” which, without clarification, makes it sound as though Scheifele and Wheeler are on opposite sides.

With that context out of the way, let me try to answer your question.

There will be those who rush to critique his sources. Eakin was an end-of-the-roster player, and deservedly so, while Hayes became an end-of-the-roster player under Paul Maurice despite much greater talents. If anyone should be disillusioned by their time in Winnipeg, it’s players who got buried like Eakin and Hayes did.

There will be others who point to moments of great leadership — Wheeler hugging Josh Morrissey at a time of great need — as a sign that poor leadership cannot also be on display. I think most of us want heroes and villains but the truth is more nuanced; a person can show up and do a phenomenal job in one moment and fall short in others.

You’re right to suggest it “hits different” when it comes from the Winnipeg Ice head coach, though.

It’s interesting. To me, Wheeler is the picture of on-ice effort — of commitment to trying to do the right thing, of never cheating a shift — even as his powers slip and age takes hold. I’d call Scheifele’s season forgettable if there weren’t so many memorable moments where it looked like he believed winning the puck back was somebody else’s job. Scheifele is the more dynamic player at this stage of his career but appears to be getting less out of himself — in an all-around capacity at least — than he is capable of. Maybe that’s beside the point; maybe the point is that, at practice, when I watch veteran players working with youth, those veterans are most frequently Paul Stastny, Brenden Dillon, Nate Schmidt and Adam Lowry and not Wheeler or Scheifele. Maybe the point is that, despite what gets said publicly, young players do make trade requests. Maybe the point is that Stastny said, “When you don’t have that, when you don’t care about the teammate next to you, potentially, and you just care about what you’re doing or certain individual things, that starts bleeding into the game.” Maybe the point is that I could think of no player but Scheifele to whom those words applied. Maybe the point is that, despite prime-aged players like Kyle Connor, Nikolaj Ehlers and Pierre-Luc Dubois being the biggest drivers of Jets success — aside from Connor Hellebuyck in every year but this one — Wheeler so often cites Winnipeg’s youth as a reason for its failures.

I think what Patrick’s words did is give public validation to internal conflict made clear by the Jets’ own season-ending words. It’s a different lens — one from outside the organization, which lends an air of objectivity, even knowing that Patrick is just one person with one perspective. His view isn’t purely objective and neither is mine.

So what do I really think about all of this? I believe that it must have taken an awful lot of internal conflict for the Jets to have called themselves out as badly as they did at season’s end.

Assuming Wheeler stays, should he still wear the “C” next season? — John B.

You’re asking (and liking) the most difficult questions, leaving me zero outs. This is a good thing: Even if I’m wrong, I hope that an honest attempt at the most difficult questions is a worthy addition to the dialogue.

My simplest (and yet simultaneously most political) answer?

I think Wheeler should have the opportunity to wear the “C” next season.

Winnipeg will hire a new head coach. Ideally, that head coach will be aware of what we’ve recognized for the past couple of years: Wheeler is still a good NHL player but he is not a first-line or elite five-on-five right winger. When Ehlers plays on that side, Wheeler is not the best right winger on his own team.

Can Wheeler buy into a reduced role? Can he do so from a secure, team-first perspective, as he once said was his goal for this stage of his career?

“I’m at the point of my career now where there’s nothing else that matters,” Wheeler told me in 2019. “I still want to be productive, I still want to have an impact on the team, I still want to have a role on the team — that’s just part of human nature and of being a player. But ultimately, if I’m doing those things and the team isn’t in a position to win, then what’s the point? I mean the clock is ticking whether I want it to or not.”

Well hello there, ticking clock. Wheeler’s role needs to shrink for the team to grow. Can he buy into that? Will he celebrate other, younger players, elevating them as opposed to ignoring their strengths? Can he use his considerable presence as a person to lead from the middle or the back of the room as opposed to in front of it?

If he can do those things, then he should wear the “C.”

If he can’t, then it should be taken from him.

I believe he should have the opportunity to meet with the new head coach well in advance of training camp to form one of those two plans.

What’s wrong with Mark Scheifele? And, am I wrong that there is even something wrong with Scheifele? — Mark S.

“Mark S” casually asks for a vibe check on Winnipeg’s most famous “Mark S” … I feel like this is one of those “Spider-Man vs. Spider-Man” moments.

I’m not going to take this question as deeply as I have taken other versions of it in the past. It can be frustrating to write “Scheifele is a great offensive player and he has a poor defensive impact, which makes complete sense when you watch him play” and watch as half the message gets missed by fans and detractors alike.

I’ve been writing some version of that statement since the 2020 trade deadline when I wrote:

“Scheifele has the skillset and disposition to be Winnipeg’s unequivocal best player — right now, even with Blake Wheeler leading the team and Connor Hellebuyck flirting with a Vezina-quality season. Scheifele is a very good player on an excellent, team-friendly contract — an all-world offensive player and the NHL’s 13th-leading point scorer … But if Scheifele is ever going to transform from “one of the league’s best offensive players” to “one of the league’s best players, period” — full stop, no qualifiers — that transformation will take place in the seconds that go by between his three strides in this clip and (Kyle) Okposo’s game-winning goal.”

I use this example now to suggest that Scheifele’s poor year defensively this season was not the first of its kind. This is not some one-off or aberration and it is definitely not a response to the Jake Evans scenario (an idea which has popped up in the comment section more than once).

This doesn’t necessarily mean anything is “wrong” with Scheifele. That he is primarily a one-dimensional player is not some kind of character flaw — he’s not the only offence-first player in the league or even on his own team. It’s possible that a change of scenery would lead him closer to that mythical “Steve Yzerman moment” in which an offensive star realizes he can help his team win more games by improving in the defensive zone. It’s also possible that coaching which seeks to use him as an offence-first player as opposed to running him in a power versus power capacity would do better to exploit his talents. It’s even possible that he’s been actively cheating the defensive side of the game in an effort to rack up as many points as possible before his next contract.

But I don’t know any of those things. The truth is Scheifele’s and the team’s to sort out. I think he’s a heck of an offensive player who can do things only the best offensive players can do.

How do the Jets integrate the youth into the lineup without compromising a “win-now mentality” that veteran players on the team want? Can the Jets go into next season trading “proven” players without upsetting their core? — Adrien C.

This is an especially good question because it looks at the shadow side of a truth most fans generally accept to be true: Winnipeg needs to better integrate its youth.

But what are the challenges? Is there a downside?

As basic as it sounds, I think the answer to this question needs to start by defining what we think about as youth. Are we talking about playing the best right winger, Ehlers, more than the second-best right winger, Wheeler? Are we talking about finding more minutes for top defensive prospects like Ville Heinola and Dylan Samberg? Expanding Cole Perfetti’s role?

Are we looking toward the end of the roster? Or are we talking about creating brand new opportunities for players like Declan Chisholm, whose AHL season (and playoffs!) imply an NHL career?

Not sure anyone walks the line better than Declan Chisholm. Great screen in front by the lunch pail line. 5-2 for the Moose. pic.twitter.com/Cz6Y05jBP1

— Dave Minuk (@ICdave) May 14, 2022

I think the lowest hanging fruit with respect to helping the Jets win now is to find more minutes for Ehlers. Despite posting more points per minute than any other Jets player, Ehlers was sixth in ice time among forwards — behind Wheeler, Scheifele, Copp, Connor, Dubois and Stastny.

There are moments of chaos to Ehlers’ game which tend to elicit arguments from his detractors to play him less. I think that partnering minutes to performance is fair game; another way to make room for younger players and to win now would be to play Dubois more when he is outplaying Scheifele. This was the case early and often this year until Dubois’ late-season fade was met with Scheifele’s late-season offensive explosion but the minutes didn’t follow suit.

Can the Jets go into next season while trading proven players (do you mean Scheifele? Wheeler? Dubois?) without shaking up their core?

No, I don’t think they can.

But if the Jets go into next season while trading proven players, I expect it’s partly because shaking up their core is the point.

(Photo: Jonathan Kozub / NHLI via Getty Images)

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Jets culture issues? Trading veterans? Promoting prospects? Mailbag