Jets Winless in Nine as Special Teams Slide and the Blue Line Gets Shuffled

A winless run that's changing the season

Nine games without a win is the kind of stretch that changes how a fanbase watches every shift. The Jets dropped all four games last week, going 0-4-0, and they sit at 4-8-3 with 11 points. Here's the thing: the record is only part of the problem. Across those four losses, Winnipeg scored seven goals and allowed 23. That's not bad luck on the scoreboard. That's a team getting out-chanced and out-executed on both ends.

The year-over-year comparison makes the drop easy to see. At this point last season, the Jets were 9-6-0 with 18 points, a 47-39 goals split. This season they're at 34 for and 54 against. That's 13 fewer goals scored and 15 more allowed, a gap that accounts for most of the seven-point difference in the standings. A team can survive a rough patch on one side of the puck. It's hard to survive losing both sides at once.

Special teams are costing the Jets games

There's a simple rule of thumb that gets passed around in hockey circles: a team's power play and penalty kill percentages should add up to at least 100 per cent. By that measure, Winnipeg is well short. The power play sits at 16.70 per cent, 25th in the league, down from 19.60 per cent when it ranked 19th. The penalty kill is at 70.00 per cent, also 25th, after being 14th at 80.40 per cent. Combined, that's 86.70, which tells you the team is giving up more than it's getting back when the whistle blows.

The faceoff numbers are a small bright spot only in the sense that they moved up. At 45.70 per cent, the Jets are 30th, up from 45.40 per cent and still at the bottom of the league. Losing draws in your own zone puts extra pressure on the penalty kill and the defence, and that's where a couple of these numbers start feeding each other. Teams in this spot usually have to fix faceoffs and the penalty kill together, because improving one doesn't do much if the other keeps bleeding.

Goaltending: three options, no clear answer

The Jets have leaned on three goalies this season, and none of them has separated himself. Stuart Skinner is 3-4-3 with a 3.36 goals-against average and a .887 save percentage. Clay Stevenson is 1-3-0 with a 3.61 GAA and a .870 save percentage. Nico Daws is 0-1-0 with a 3.11 GAA and a .913 save percentage, the best numbers of the three, though it's a small sample.

That's why the Daws question is getting louder. The hosts of the Winnipeg Hockey Talk show raised the point that the New Jersey deal brought in a goalie, and if the thinking was that Daws represented an upgrade over Stevenson, the logic only holds if Stevenson's spot is being kept for a reason. Their argument is that Stevenson's presence is roster-blocking Brayden Yager, a prospect who has been producing in Manitoba. Whether that's the actual reasoning inside the organization is a question only the team can answer. What's clear from the numbers is that none of the three goalies is giving the club a reliable night, and that's a bigger issue than any single name on the depth chart.

Defence pairings in flux

Josh Morrissey remains the clear top defenceman, and the hosts see Elias Salomonsson as the next best option on the blue line. Neal Pionk has been working hard to generate offence, but the pairings haven't yet found a stable identity. The hosts' proposed alignment for when the group is healthy looks like this:

Morrissey with Salomonsson, Samberg with Pionk, Ferraro with Bauer, and Fleury with DeMelo.

These are the hosts' suggestions rather than confirmed line combinations from the coaching staff, so treat them as a read on performance rather than a roster decision. Still, the logic is easy to follow. Pairing your best players together gives them more ice against the opposition's top units, and it keeps the depth pairs from getting buried in tough minutes. When a team is struggling to defend the slot, matchups and pairings tend to be among the first things fans and analysts scrutinize.

The good, the bad and the ugly

Good: Pionk kept pushing to create offence, and that effort is worth noting when the scoreboard offers so little encouragement.

Bad: A 7-23 goals split across four games is a number that speaks for itself. It means the Jets were chasing the score in nearly every period and rarely had a lead to protect.

Ugly: The list goes well beyond one area. Faceoffs, giveaways, slot coverage, special teams, board battles and overall physical play all came up. Those are the details that decide one-goal games, and right now they're all going the wrong way at the same time. When board battles are lost, the puck comes back to the defence, and when slot coverage slips, the goals follow. The chain reaction is what makes the problem difficult to fix with one change.

Manitoba Moose keeping pace

The Manitoba Moose have started 8-4, with 47 goals for and 32 against. That's a healthy return for the club and a reminder that the organization's pipeline is producing results even while the parent club struggles. Brayden Yager has 12 points in 10 games for the Moose. Prospects who are dominating at the American Hockey League level while waiting for an NHL opportunity often end up forcing the issue, because teams find it hard to ignore production that's this consistent.

What to watch next

The next stretch will show whether Winnipeg can stop the bleeding. The first thing to track is special teams: if the power play and penalty kill don't start to climb, the rule of thumb will keep flagging the problem and the games will stay tight in the wrong direction. The second is goaltending. Whichever netminder gets the net needs to stabilize the goals-against number before the team can afford to take risks. And the third is whether the coaching staff changes the defence pairings. If the Jets stay with the current group, the blue line will keep looking like a patchwork. Watch the next few games closely, because a nine-game winless run is long enough to define a season if it isn't broken soon.