The Vegas Golden Knights entered the NHL by exploiting a unique expansion draft format. They’ve followed that success by competing for every star player on the trade and UFA markets, trading for elite performers Jack Eichel, Mark Stone, and Mitch Marner. They’ve signed everyone they’ve needed to sign, moved on from core players well before they were forced, and let older core pieces walk instead of committing UFA money to players past their prime.

There’s also the part where they fired their 2023 Stanley Cup-winning head coach shortly before the playoffs began. It was a move so antithetical to the Winnipeg Jets’ loyalty-focused approach that we felt moved to reimagine the Jets’ 10 most important transactions through a more ruthless, Vegas-esque lens. Not every ruthless re-do worked out better for Winnipeg — be careful what you wish for — but the comment section was filled with people suggesting we take the ruthless approach toward this Jets offseason.

Now that Vegas has reached its third Stanley Cup Final in only nine years, it’s time to make good on the request. This is Winnipeg’s ruthless route forward — starting with difficult decisions about an aging core, superstars included.

1. Picking a lane: Live in the moment, retool, or rebuild?

The backstory: Winnipeg isn’t good enough to win the Stanley Cup, as constructed, and needs more impact players than it has available. Miss the playoffs again and core players like Connor Hellebuyck may shift their priorities elsewhere, despite long-term contracts.

In Vegas, the answer would be simple. Whereas most teams follow competitive cycles, the Golden Knights have maneuvered their way into a perpetual state of “win now.” Don’t want to pay Jonathan Marchessault? That’s fine: Just acquire Tomas Hertl, Noah Hanifin, Reilly Smith, and Rasmus Andersson at successive trade deadlines. Sign UFA Alex Pietrangelo. Trade Nate Schmidt after the fact. You’ll figure out the cap; you always do. And if a truly great player like Eichel, Stone, or Marner becomes available? Go all-in, fearing nothing. They’ll sign long-term, without issue.

Winnipeg can’t beat Vegas at being Vegas. The Jets’ loyalty-based approach — signing top veterans well into their late 30s — is one alternative, but has its limits. The Jets have succeeded when they fin unheralded players on other teams but they haven’t recently acquired elite talent via trade, UFA, or the draft. When they have spent first-round picks for Paul Stastny, Kevin Hayes, and Sean Monahan, those players have signed elsewhere. Winnipeg’s approach requires an outstanding prospect pipeline, ambitious promotion from within, and excellent retention rates of its own top prospects but often lacks draft capital.

The ruthless approach: Ownership would hate it. It would probably hurt attendance. It would dismantle decades-long relationships with players the Jets drafted, developed, and retained. But the most ruthless approach is to sell Winnipeg’s mid-30s talent while it’s still performing at a high level.

This is one of the worst UFA markets in years. The salary cap has increased to $104 million and is projected to go up again in 2027-28 and 2028-29. There may never be a better market for elite players like Mark Scheifele and Hellebuyck at $8.5 million cap hits. Scheifele just scored 103 points, while Hellebuyck added an Olympic gold medal to his Hart Trophy and three Vezinas. Josh Morrissey is one of the league’s top defencemen, despite a paltry $6.25 million cap hit. Kyle Connor’s $12 million AAV is higher, but he’s scored the 11th most goals in the NHL over the past three seasons.

All four players have some level of no-trade protection. The process to encourage them to waive could be brutal. But their collective value will never be higher than this summer, with this cap, and these free agents. The most ruthless approach would be to trade them while their values are at their peak.

The projected outcome: Broken hearts. We often discuss players who won’t come to Winnipeg. Now we’re talking about trading four of its greatest players, all of whom chose to stay. The rest depends on Winnipeg’s ability to manage such a massive undertaking.

Anecdotally, a rebuild could be the best or worst thing Winnipeg ever did. The horror stories are many, with Edmonton at risk of fumbling the top superstar of his era and Buffalo finally back in the playoffs over a decade after drafting Eichel. There are success stories; Montreal looks poised to contend for several years, while teams like Pittsburgh, Chicago, Los Angeles, Tampa Bay, and Colorado all bottomed out before winning the Cup. In the background of all this, we’re only two years removed from this alarm from ownership about attendance issues.

This proactive, loving embrace of such risk is beyond the real life Jets, but a rebuild isn’t a Vegas-style solution. The Golden Knights don’t commit to draft capital — they move on from core players before their age-related decline causes their value to plunge. If Winnipeg’s veterans ever truly wanted out, the Jets would be better off moving them too early than too late.

2. Kevin Cheveldayoff: The end of an era?

The backstory: Kevin Cheveldayoff will become the longest-serving GM when Doug Armstrong officially passes the Blues’ job to Alex Steen on July 1. During Cheveldayoff’s tenure, Winnipeg has won the 11th-most regular-season games and the 23rd-most playoff games in the league.

Cheveldayoff is meant to have the toughest job in the league, as agents and rival executives frequently remind me, due to the league’s proliferation of no-trade clauses and UFA challenges. It’s possible that Winnipeg’s middling results in 15 seasons reflect disproportionate success relative to the task and that cutting Cheveldayoff loose would only cause Winnipeg to decline. In this thought exercise, however, results matter most.

The ruthless approach: Cheveldayoff is fired.

The projected outcome: One GM’s array of strengths and weaknesses gets replaced by another GM’s array of strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps Winnipeg’s cap outlook gets murkier as Cheveldayoff and AGM Larry Simmons are replaced by people who are less fastidious than they are. Perhaps the Jets make a higher volume of signings or trades, throwing more ideas at the wall, or perhaps they get shut down by no-movement clauses more than they do now.

The new hire and their staff would have their own blueprint for contention, with or without a rebuild. Their plan and their specific relationships, biases, strengths, and weaknesses would lead to their own outcomes. Commenter Zee B. recently suggested that Winnipeg “no longer manages prospects for game impact — they manage them to maximize contract control. No one makes the big club until they can no longer clear waivers.” Maybe that changes. Maybe the new staff takes a different approach to development. Maybe some prospects become spectacular busts under a new regime, while others develop more while playing with top NHL talent early in their careers.

We’ve only seen one Jets GM since 2011 and he’s not fond of sharing detailed stories about Winnipeg’s challenges as a market. As such, it’s difficult to speak with certainty about this outcome or how likely it is that a different GM would get better results.

3. Scott Arniel’s Presidents’ Trophy and playoff miss

The backstory: Scott Arniel is the 14th-longest tenured head coach in the NHL since taking over from Rick Bowness. Winnipeg has won the eighth-most regular-season games and the 12th-most playoff games during that time, but it just missed the playoffs.

The ruthless approach: Arniel is fired. This is a piece about ruthlessness, after all.

The projected outcome: Arniel wouldn’t have to be a problem for this path to lead to short-term improvement. The “new coach bump” is a real phenomenon, studied across multiple sports, and is working wonders for Vegas right now. I believe that roster quality is the bigger determinant of team success, although there are certain coach-to-team fits that I enjoy. One example is Rod Brind’Amour in Carolina; Paul Maurice, the great motivator, also makes sense with all of those veteran shift disturbers in Florida.

There’s a potential downside. The coaching UFA market is no more stilted in Winnipeg’s favour than the players’ market is. There is a finite list of candidates who have strong ties to the city; it’s possible that burning bridges at a Vegas-esque rate would hurt Winnipeg’s hiring efforts down the road.

4. Roster decisions, regardless of rebuild

The backstory: Even if Winnipeg keeps star veterans like Hellebuyck, Scheifele, Connor, and Morrissey, several veterans underperformed last season. Two examples are Nino Niederreiter and Vladislav Namestnikov, who may have been limited by injuries last season. Health may help, but they’re each 33 years old, with 2027 UFA eligibility, and they scored 33 points in 121 combined games despite earning $7 million between them. On defence, Dylan DeMelo (33) and Neal Pionk (30) are each coming off down years.

The ruthless approach: Niederreiter and Namestnikov would be traded for depth picks or even bought out. Their minutes would go to prospects like Brayden Yager, Nikita Chibrikov, or Danny Zhilkin or $1 million UFAs like Tanner Pearson. Ruthlessness may not have a large role on defence, however; the Jets can’t sign Rasmus Andersson and Elias Salomonsson is hurt.

The projected outcome: More opportunities for young players, full stop. Winnipeg has played pending UFAs who sign elsewhere at the expense of its own players as far back as Anthony Bitetto and as recently as Luke Schenn.

Did you notice a theme in this piece? The impact of ruthlessness is to tear things down. How do the Jets build themselves back up? At some point, there must be a group of players drafted, developed, and retained by Winnipeg who can compete for the Cup. This will take a form of loyalty — to the right players, in the right window, with the right cap-efficient contracts. Maybe the lesson is that it’s easy to treat people like they’re expendable when the next UFA is always available and you’re still rich in trade assets from the expansion draft. (Maybe it’s hire more Manitobans, although it didn’t work with Jonathan Toews.)

As much as the Golden Knights are the NHL’s villains, it’s clear that they don’t treat winning like a hope play. The Jets would do well to have similar courage in their convictions at this inflection point in franchise history, whatever their identity is about to become.