Another season has gone by where Paul Postma has been the Winnipeg Jets perennial press box prisoner. After seasons that were hampered by injuries, this was Postma’s first season that he went through with a clean bill of health and it only saw him play twenty-six games while he put up two points, both being goals. He didn’t see himself become a regular in the line-up until the middle of February. Due to his lack of playing time, he was even sent down to the Manitoba Moose for a few games on a conditioning stint.
When looking at the numbers, his CF60 (59.16) places him second on the team, only behind Dustin Byfuglien. His raw CF% places him once again at the top, trailing only Byfuglien. Out of all defenseman with 200+ minutes played this season his Rel.CF% has him sitting at twenty-seventh overall. Can you guess where his Rel.CF% places him among Jets defenders? That’s right, second. The two players who Paul Maurice constantly put in the lineup over Postma, who were Mark Stuart and Ben Chiarot, both sit at the very bottom.
Paul Postma only saw 274 minutes of ice time this season and a large chunk of those minutes came once the injury bug claimed the seasons of Tyler Myers and Tobias Enstrom. If you look at Postma’s game log there’s a good handful of games where he doesn’t even come close to cracking ten minutes of ice time.
Future
Frankly, Paul Postma is a top 6 defenseman in the NHL. He is better than Ben Chiarot and he is better than Mark Stuart and we all know by now that the Jets will never scratch Mark Stuart. With Josh Morrissey potentially getting a spot on the team next year his chances of getting some more time on the ice is only going to get even more difficult. Another thing that could be hurting Postma’s chances is the fact that he is a right handed shot and the Jets are already loaded up on that side for the foreseeable future with Dustin Byfuglien, Tyler Myers, and Jacob Trouba.
Barring a trade of some sort that either gets Paul Postma out of Winnipeg or one of the aforementioned right handed defenseman, I see Postma's upcoming season being a repeat of last year. Maybe they put him on waivers and someone decides to claim him and ends his suffering. Postma is signed for only one more year. After that, he will finally be an unrestricted free agent. There is absolutely no chance that he will be coming back. You're almost free, Paul.
All advanced stats come from Corsica Hockey.
