The St. Louis Blues and Winnipeg Jets have battled back and forth for playoff positioning over the past three years, but now there might be a changing of the guard.
The Winnipeg Jets seem to be in a freefall organizationally with the unlikely departure of Dustin Byfuglien and the fact that Patrik Laine and Kyle Connor remain unsigned. It’s time for the St. Louis Blues to take advantage.
The Jets finished second in the Central Division last season after falling just one point shy behind the Nashville Predators for the division crown. Winnipeg ended up tied with the Blues with 99 points in the regular season but finished in second place due to tiebreakers.
The Blues ended Winnipeg’s playoff run in the first round in an epic six-game series. The Blues won the first two games of the series, followed by two straight from the Jets. St. Louis famously won game five on a last-second goal by Schwartz who then followed his performance up the next game by netting a playoff hat trick.
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The Jets are bringing back essentially the same roster from a year ago, however, with the absence of Byfuglien from the team and the fact that Laine and Connor remain unsigned, it’s difficult to project into Winnipeg’s future.
Reports out of Winnipeg suggest that the strong defensemen may be considering retirement after taking time to himself before training camp started. Byfuglien is not the first player to do this, as we saw Hurricanes forward Justin Williams step away from the game.
Offensively, if the Jets can’t come to terms with Laine and or Connor, it’s hard to see how the team would make the playoffs.
Laine is a perennial 40-50 goal scorer in the league, and you can’t blame him for holding out for a new contract for so long. He deserves to get paid top money, and the recent signing of Mitch Marner certainly does not help the Jets case to lock him up short term.
While Connor is not the offensive presence that Laine is, he has still proven to be an elite goal scorer, and if he holds out for any extended period of time, the Jets will miss his productivity.
Connor Hellybuck is Winnipeg’s guy between the pipes. He is locked up for five more seasons at a cap hit of $6.166.
The Blues seemed to have exposed Hellybuck during the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season, and whether or not that was part of the Blues’ magic of last year’s run, I might be a little skeptical if I am a Jets fan.
The Central Division is loaded, and this might be the hottest take when it comes to the Central this season, but I don’t see the Winnipeg Jets making the playoffs. If they do get in, they will need to beat out a team from the Pacific for a wild card berth.