{"id":650721,"date":"2026-05-06T03:42:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T03:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/650721\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T03:42:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T03:42:07","slug":"why-jets-should-explore-all-options-with-no-8-pick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/650721\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Jets should explore all options with No. 8 pick"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lady Luck was not on the Winnipeg Jets<\/a>\u2019 side at the NHL Draft Lottery. Now the club must decide if it wants to lean into the idea that fortune favours the bold.<\/p>\n

The Jets finished seventh from the bottom in the league standings, but are left with pick No. 8 after the San Jose Sharks \u2014 who finished ninth from the bottom \u2014 jumped up and snagged the second-overall pick by virtue of winning the second lottery draw on Tuesday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now the Jets are, in top-10 terms anyway, officially in no man\u2019s land at No. 8. Lord knows you can find a fantastic player there, but you\u2019re unlikely to draft somebody who is going to help you next October the way you could have with a lottery win. Really, anybody you take this year probably doesn\u2019t help the team in a meaningful way until at least 2027-28.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s fine for the type of rebuilding team you typically find inside the top 10 of the draft, but Winnipeg is in win-now mode. And the heat definitely went up a degree or two when franchise goalie Connor Hellebuyck said, \u201cWhat we did this year is unacceptable\u201d at his year-end media availability, leaving no doubt he\u2019s not satisfied with the current state of the team.<\/p>\n

So where does Winnipeg go from here?<\/p>\n

On one hand, the Jets haven\u2019t picked as high as eighth since 2016, when the team selected Patrik Laine at No. 2. Winnipeg has sent some picks and prospects out the door at recent trade deadlines, and the chance to add a titillating item to the prospect cupboard would certainly be welcome.<\/p>\n

Heck, in the team\u2019s relatively recent past, they\u2019ve found Nikolaj Ehlers (ninth overall in 2014), Jacob Trouba (ninth in 2012) and Mark Scheifele (seventh in 2011) in and around that eighth pick.<\/p>\n

The 2026 field is considered strong inside the top 10, and there\u2019s definitely an opportunity to land a serious player. Sportsnet\u2019s Sam Cosentino<\/a> had the likes of Swedish dynamo\u00a0Viggo Bjorck \u2014 an undersized forward who was fantastic while winning gold at the 2026 World Junior Championship \u2014 and big Latvian defender Alberts Smits \u2014 who has already gone up against the best players in the world at the Olympics \u2014 as players potentially on the board when Winnipeg\u2019s brass would be strolling up to the podium. If the Jets are making the selection, it certainly feels like a true best-player-available scenario.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, again, good as any player you snag there may ultimately be, they\u2019re probably not helping improve Hellebuyck\u2019s outlook about the franchise any time soon, as a team that finished first overall one season ago looks to get back to that lofty perch.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s actually an interesting dynamic at the end of the top 10 with Winnipeg holding the eighth pick and the Florida Panthers \u2014 who won the Cup just 11 months ago \u2014 slotted to pick at No. 9.<\/p>\n

You could see both those clubs valuing immediate help over a good prospect as they both aim to regain contender status for 2026-27. What may separate the teams, though, is the fact Florida \u2014 depending on what happens with pending-UFA goalie Sergei Bobrovsky \u2014 doesn\u2019t have a glaring need at any one position when everybody is healthy.<\/p>\n

The Jets, however, have a long-running issue with regard to the fact that they just have not been able to find a strong, sustainable fit at second-line centre.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re really going out there with that kind of player on your shopping list, the eighth-overall selection would be a great chip in a potential deal.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly uncommon for a top-10 pick to be moved ahead of the draft once the order has been locked in, but we have seen a couple examples this decade. In 2022, the Ottawa Senators surrendered the seventh pick in a swap to get Alex DeBrincat from the Chicago Blackhawks. The year prior, the Arizona Coyotes acquired the ninth pick from Vancouver for a package that included defenceman Oliver Ekmann-Larsson and Conor Garland.<\/p>\n

The Coyotes used that selection to take Dylan Guenther, who\u2019s now a stud for the franchise in Utah, while Ekmann-Larsson and Garland are no longer part of a Canucks organization that had the misfortune of falling to No. 3 on Tuesday night despite having the best odds of picking first.<\/p>\n

As always, nothing is guaranteed in life or hockey.<\/p>\n

Still, it\u2019s undeniably a unique situation to have a hockey team with high aspirations, a clear need at a prime spot, recent proof-of-concept that it can be a very good club and the bullet of a top-10 pick to shop on a trade market that\u2019s expected to be quite active this summer.<\/p>\n

Chances are, Winnipeg will leave the late-June draft in Buffalo with a shiny new toy that can help down the road. But it certainly makes sense to explore all options before handing a Jets sweater to a teenager, no matter how talented.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lady Luck was not on the Winnipeg Jets\u2019 side at the NHL Draft Lottery. Now the club must…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-650721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}