This year’s Winnipeg Jets team is more likely to draft inside the top five than to make the playoffs. To talk about it in terms of winning the Stanley Cup is absurd.
It’s also highly instructive. The Jets’ season was a disaster, but their future doesn’t have to be.
Winnipeg has strengths in key areas of its roster, even when compared to recent Stanley Cup champions. Connor Hellebuyck is a luxury in goal, while Josh Morrissey is performing at a level beyond that of franchise defencemen on the overwhelming majority of Cup winners from 2010 through last season’s Florida Panthers. Mark Scheifele and Kyle Connor, whose defensive warts can partially suck the impact out of their offence, are performing at an overall level in line with that of past Cup champions, too.
It’s what comes after them that poses a problem — partly because it’s not good enough and partly because Winnipeg’s response to its top-heavy roster construction has been to lean so hard on shifts that feature all of Connor, Scheifele and Morrissey that some of their top players’ success seems unsustainable.
Today we’re digging into all of it. How do the Winnipeg Jets compare to the most recent 16 Stanley Cup champions? Where are they having success, where do they need the most help, and how are they supposed to fill their roster holes?
The Stanley Cup contender checklist
Every NHL fan has an idea of what a team needs to win the Stanley Cup. Take a moment to consider yours: Maybe it starts with two franchise centremen, such as Joe Sakic and Peter Forsberg in Colorado or Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin in Pittsburgh. Maybe it starts with an all-around defenceman such as prime Drew Doughty or an offensive superstar such as Cale Makar — or maybe you start with an elite goaltender such as Andrei Vasilevskiy at the peak of his powers or Jordan Binnington that season he caught fire.
Either way, you’re trying to build an overpowered roster, with so many good players that some of them would almost certainly play higher up the lineup on average on weaker teams. You know you don’t need the best player at every single position, but you want to be better and deeper than the teams you’re going to need to beat in the playoffs.
The Stanley Cup contender checklist is one way of approaching the question of what it takes to win the Cup. It uses Dom Luszczyszyn’s offensive and defensive ratings model from 2023 (and the usage adjustments he made in 2024) to compare every Cup winner from Chicago in 2010 to Florida last year. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule that dictates the only way Cups are won in the NHL.
The contender checklist has been updated since I evaluated last year’s Jets team — and then found the post-deadline Stars and Avalanche were even better than the Jets.
Here’s how it works, according to Luszczyszyn’s write-up.
The new Cup Checklist focuses on role more than position and looks at the appropriate values that define that role. It also looks at each item on the checklist with a five-point scale, allowing for a bit more nuance if a team is stronger or weaker in one role compared to another.
Players get ranked as one of the following:
Luxury (>90%): A player in the top 10 percent of his role relative to other Cup winners. Someone who brings an exceptional amount of value that allows a team some significant slack in other areas. Or, it’s the kind of difference-maker who puts a team over the top.
Ideal (70-90%): A player who is above average for his role relative to other Cup winners. This is where champions find sources of strength on their roster. They’re players to lean on who add more to their role than expected, making up for some weaknesses elsewhere.
Solid (30-70%): A player right in the middle of the range of other Cup winners. Nothing fancy here, just the average expectation with a fair bit of leeway above and below the mean.
Passable (10-30%): A player who is below average for his role relative to other Cup winners. It’s not ideal, but teams have still won with a player at this level. It’s a potential weakness that should be countered with a source of strength elsewhere.
Exception (<10%): A player in the bottom 10 percent of his role relative to other Cup winners. Essentially, they’re the “exception to the rule.” It’s not that a team can’t win with an exception to the rule (some already have!), it just means that a player has to play above his means when it matters, or the team has to make up ground elsewhere. It’s a potential liability that could be the team’s downfall. On the more hopeful side, it’s where a team needs a playoff breakthrough. The postseason is where legends are born and a lot of great stories start here: with a player who went above and beyond expectations.
We’re about to look at 13 Jets roster spots from franchise forwards and defencemen through shutdown players, support scoring and goaltenders.
Fifteen of the past 16 Stanley Cup champions graded out as “solid” or better for at least half of the players in those roster spots. Fifteen of the past 16 champions also had at least two players meeting the “ideal” criteria for their position on the roster.
How does Winnipeg do?
Winnipeg’s ‘elite’ core: Its biggest strengths are, in fact, big strengths
One of the most important takeaways from this year’s assessment is that Winnipeg’s star players — Hellebuyck, Morrissey, Scheifele and Connor — meet the standards of Cup champions.
These players take plenty of criticism, including from me, when their defensive game goes awry (see Connor’s backhand saucer pass to David Pastrnak in Boston). The truth is that Winnipeg needs more players who impact the game like their star players do — not for those star players to be tossed aside for their flaws.
Going by this rubric, Winnipeg is missing only one out of five pieces of its Cup-caliber elite core.
PlayerRoleGrade
Franchise forward
Passable
Star forward
Solid
Franchise defenceman
Ideal
Shutdown forward
Exception
Star goaltender
Luxury
Scheifele’s offensive production — 31 goals, 52 assists, 83 points — puts him on pace for a career-high 100 points this season. He’s been spectacular on that front, guiding the Jets to wins at times no one else could drive offence. When he hasn’t produced, the Jets have generally lost. His defensive impact does hurt him, though. Scheifele’s negative defensive rating drags him down from “solid” overall impact, such as Anže Kopitar in 2014 and Alex Ovechkin in 2018, to “passable,” which is more in line with Ryan O’Reilly in 2019.
If you watch any Jets hockey, it should not be surprising that Connor grades out in a similar fashion — brilliant offence, below-average defence. The threshold for a team’s second-best forward is lower than for its No. 1, though, so Connor scores as “solid” compared to recent Cup champions. He scores enough to grade out similarly to Patrick Kane in 2013, Evgeni Kuznetsov in 2018 and Brayden Point in 2021, but Connor’s defensive impact costs him the opportunity to be truly exceptional compared to No. 2 forwards on Cup champions.
The only Cup-winning franchise defencemen from 2010 through 2025 who graded out better than Morrissey does now are Cale Makar in 2022 and Kris Letang in 2016. He’s among just a few all-around masters of his craft, producing enough offence to be among the league’s best with the puck and defending against elite competition so effectively that he’s one of the best there, too. Morrissey deserves the Norris Trophy consideration he gets every season; I’ve argued before his dancing at the blue line and power-play production obscure real quality in his defensive game, too.
You either believe in Hellebuyck or you don’t; at this point, the reigning Hart Trophy-winning goaltender has three Vezinas and an Olympic gold. Whatever you think of his recent playoff performance, it’s no wonder the gold medal thief grades out as “ideal.”
Adam Lowry is not an ideal shutdown centre. That might not come as a surprise after the season Lowry has had. Hip surgery has clearly impacted his explosiveness; not only is Lowry not scoring at his customary 35-point pace, but he’s also not the dominant defender we’ve watched for several consecutive seasons.
The surprising part is just how far even the best version of Lowry falls short of this category. Cup-winning teams tend to have shutdown forwards delivering Lowry’s best defence and more than his best point production, too: Florida’s comparable is Sam Reinhart, for example, while Colorado scored highly for having Gabriel Landeskog in this slot in 2022.
I have a lot of faith in Lowry’s returning to form next season. I think being healthy enough to return to the lineup is not the same thing as having the maximum explosiveness that comes with a full offseason of training. But the Jets need more than Lowry in this position. Ideally, they’d have someone closer to the impact of Anthony Cirelli, and that’s a problem, because those players are hard to find.
Winnipeg’s ‘support’ core: Three key hits, one big miss
Winnipeg’s next wave of players — a scoring forward, a support forward, a scoring defenceman and a shutdown defenceman — surprise one more time: The Jets do have quality players meeting most of these requirements.
PlayerRoleGrade
Scoring forward
Solid
Scoring defenceman
Exception
Shutdown defenceman
Solid
Support forward
Solid
Gabriel Vilardi has been a positive story this year, putting himself on pace for his career highs in goals, assists and points for the second straight season. He scores the most when playing on the Jets’ top line with Connor and Scheifele but is not limited to that role; Vilardi has produced secondary scoring playing with Lowry, Cole Perfetti and Jonathan Toews. Add it all up, and Vilardi is right up there with T.J. Oshie (2018), Jake Guentzel (2017) and Patrick Sharp (2010) in terms of overall impact.
Perfetti’s positive offensive and defensive ratings help him meet the mark as the Jets’ fifth-most-important forward. The bar is lower at Perfetti’s spot in the depth chart than it is for people getting Connor’s, Scheifele’s or Vilardi’s minutes, but he clears it, matching comparables such as Chris Kunitz (2016), David Perron (2019) and Mike Richards (2012.) (And, if you’re wondering how he grades out so well defensively, consider zone exits: Perfetti consistently makes plays that help get the Jets across their blue line, avoiding some of the defensive perils available to Winnipeg’s other forwards.)
Dylan Samberg has recovered from a substandard first half of the season to his usual standard: shutting down top forwards while providing just enough puck movement to help the Jets get up the ice. This season had been difficult for him, what with his injury and then Neal Pionk’s extended absence, but Samberg and Elias Salomonsson have mostly succeeded as Winnipeg’s second pair.
The big hole in this section belongs to Pionk. His offence was way down this season — as perhaps expected, given that only one forward line scored for most of it and Morrissey’s pair got more minutes with that line. But Pionk doesn’t tilt the ice as much as his Cup-winning peers — Brent Seabrook (2013, 2015), Mikhail Sergachev (2020), or Shea Theodore (2023). He’d need much better results at both ends of the ice to grade out as a strength for Winnipeg in his spot.
Winnipeg’s ‘depth’ core: Three more hits, one more miss
PlayerRoleGrade
Offensive forward
Exception
Defensive defenceman
Luxury
Depth forward
Solid
Defensive forward
Ideal
Whether you view him as a product of Morrissey, appreciate his puck retrievals or find yourself aggrieved by the times he gets beaten, Dylan DeMelo grades out as a luxury as a team’s defence-first, fourth-most-important defenceman. That he plays the second-biggest role on this year’s team — and would ideally be bumped down the depth chart — is not an indication that he couldn’t help a Cup-winning team, as Johnny Oduya did in 2015.
Look at Lowry’s “ideal” grade here for a similar argument. Whereas the Jets’ captain did not deliver enough all-around results to meet the bar for “shutdown” forward higher up the lineup, he’s more than good enough to play a third-line, defence-first role on a Cup-caliber team. His comparables here are Jarret Stoll (2012, 2014), John Madden (2010) and Eetu Luostarinen (2024, 2025). The same logic applies to Nino Niederreiter, showing adequately as a depth forward.
Winnipeg’s biggest need in this section is one more forward who can be counted on to score, whether we’re talking about Vladimir Tarasenko in 2024, Phil Kessel in 2017 or André Burakovsky in 2022. Great teams have players as productive as these players were in excess; Winnipeg needs more.
The Jets’ final tally: Big strengths, big needs
Winnipeg’s star power comes off looking good in this study. There simply isn’t enough of it — and I’m not sure Jets fans will find that encouraging or disappointing.
On one hand, Winnipeg needs “only” a second-line centre, another top-six forward and an upgrade on defence. On the other hand, Winnipeg needs a better second-line centre, another top-six forward and an upgrade on defence.
Not every Cup champion is blue boxes across the board. With nine of 13 players scoring as “solid” or better, the Jets are better off than the 2018 Capitals and 2011 Bruins were when they won it all. Remember that sufficient strength in one area — say, Hellebuyck at his best — should be enough to make up for deficiencies in another. Connor McDavid made it to Game 7 of the 2024 Cup Final on a team with as many holes in it as the 2025-26 Jets.
Winnipeg’s holes are substantial, and the path to acquiring much-needed help has not always been easy. The Jets have sent out multiple first-round picks in search of a 2C by trade; they’ve never managed to retain the player they acquire. They’ve picked up good depth forwards such as Niederreiter and Vladislav Namestnikov for cheap, but they’ve lost more players with another offensive gear to their game (Nikolaj Ehlers) than they’ve gained in the last calendar year. If they’d gotten the 2014 edition of Toews, this study might land entirely differently.
— Dom Luszczyszyn contributed to this story.