After the action involved during yesterday’s hectic NHL trade deadline, I know that many fans of the True North franchise have become a bit more worried about how the 2024-25 season will play out for our Winnipeg Jets. Especially since two of the team’s biggest Central Division rivals made some of the biggest moves of the day.
The Colorado Avalanche’s GM made a few moves over the past week to try and improve his squad’s chances in the post-season, but the biggest single addition is clearly centerman Brock Nelson. With a total of 14 skaters and 6 draft picks changing hands, the Avs attempted to solidify their center and defensemen depth in a series of four transactions….yet that doesn’t include their earlier blockbuster when the sent Mikko Rantanen to the Carolina Hurricanes for Martin Necas and other things. Here is the list of GM Chris MacFarland’s work leading up to the deadline:
The Dallas Stars were awarded “Winners of Deadline Day” by the media when they swept in to snag Mikko Rantanen from the Canes after they agreed to a $12M/year extension with the big Finnish forward. That was the franchise’s only move of the day, partly because they got some of the work done in early February when they acquired center Mikael Granlund & defenseman Cody Ceci from the San Jose Sharks for a 1st round pick (DAL 2025) & a 4th rounder (WPG 2025). Below is what it cost for GM Jim Nill to bring the best player moved on deadline day to the state of Texas:
The league leading Winnipeg Jets, on the other hand, were relatively quiet…making just three moves to improve the team’s depth heading into the playoffs. GM Kevin Cheveldayoff was either unable, unwilling, or blocked from his goal of finding an impact 2nd line center, while he also didn’t fill the need for an upgrade on 3rd pairing LD Logan Stanley. The Jets’ fans had to be happy with adding a bit of grit to the defense with veteran Luke Schenn and the return of spark plug grinder Brandon Tanev. Here is the full transaction list for the True North franchise from the days leading up to the deadline:
While the talking heads in the media were quick to talk about how tough the Atlantic Division got after the Florida Panthers (B. Marchand), Tampa Bay Lightning (O. Bjorkstrand & Y. Gourde), & Toronto Maple Leafs (B. Carlo & S. Laughton) made their moves, they couldn’t ignore that the Central Division might have turned into the NHL’s Group of Death. Even the former players on the panel who have taken too many hits to the head quickly determined that it would be beneficial to finish in the division’s top spot and thus avoid a match-up against the other top teams in the first round of the playoffs.
And of course they are correct….so it might behoove us to familiarize ourselves with the current standings with the help of the people at ESPN. Before the noon games started, this is how the Central Division looked:
***
A quick glance at the standings might give Winnipeg fans the false hope of a big lead (8 pts) with a quarter of the regular season remaining to play, but just like a rear view mirror, the Dallas Stars are “closer than they appear“. With two games in hand, the Stars could arguably make up half the deficit by winning those contests and then the fact that Winnipeg & Dallas will meet two more times before the playoffs will provide them the opportunity to level things up.
The Colorado Avalanche & Minnesota Wild are currently deadlocked in a battle for 3rd place and avoid the wildcard race. Though I’m sure the majority of hockey fans think the Avs will end up winning that battle since the Wild have really been hurt by a slew of injuries.
After that, there really is only the St. Louis Blues & Utah Hockey Club that have any hopes at a post-season appearance, though both currently sit outside of the wildcard spots as we see below in ESPN’s Western Conference standings:
While I will never underestimate the Colorado Avalanche after the thrashing they gave the Winnipeg Jets in last year’s playoffs, I sincerely doubt that they can overcome the 8 game deficit (16 pts) to overtake the True Northers before the end of the season. Therefore, the remainder of this article will focus solely on the upcoming schedules for the Dallas Stars & our Jets….with the winners likely awarded the chance to play one of the Los Angeles Kings, Vancouver Canucks, Calgary Flames, St. Louis Blues, or Utah HC in the opening round of the playoffs.
As noted above, the Stars have two more games left than the Jets (20 to 18) and there is good & bad news for Winnipeg fans when you dig deeper into what the teams have on the horizon. For example, both squads will play the same number of games against the NHL’s top 15 teams (11), but that also means the Stars’ two games in hand will be against the “lesser” franchises. Fans from the Peg might be consoled by the fact that the Texans have to play 6 games against teams sitting in the 7th to 11 range, but disheartened when they see the Stars get to play five matches against the worst teams (WPG only 3).
Since both the Jets & Stars are sitting in the top 5 of the NHL, I have excluded them from the counts below so the top 5 really is the top 6 teams in the league. After that, I have broken up the remaining teams into groups of five until the last one, when I included the bottom six franchises. Check out the breakdown of the quality of opposition both Dallas & Winnipeg have left in the graphic below:
Both Winnipeg & Dallas have been playing well lately (7-2-1 in last 10) and neither really disrupted their lineups at the deadline by making too many additions, so I would expect the post-deadline adjustment periods to be minimal.
Although, Rantanen didn’t exactly shine in his brief stint with the Carolina Hurricanes (6 pts in 13 gms), so there is a chance that he takes some time to get used to Dallas’ system. We saw that Tanev fit seamlessly into Winnipeg’s lineup last night, but it remains to be seen how the addition of Schenn to the Jets’ defense goes. From what I saw on MoneyPuck, he didn’t play the left side at all in the last two seasons with the Nashville Predators, so it does seem that he will bump out Colin Miller. Which is a bit unfortunate, because in sheltered 3rd pairing minutes, Miller has put up 1st pairing level advanced statistics.
Regardless, I see this race for the Central Division title going down to the final wire and those two head-to-head contests (March 14th & April 10th) will play a key role in determining whether Winnipeg or Dallas gets to face off against a wildcard team in the opening round of the playoffs. The Jets will be very thankful for the multiple long winning streaks earlier this year (11, 8, 7) as they attempt to hold off a late season charge by the Stars.
Now that you’ve gotten the chance to digest all that information, how do you see the final standings looking when every NHL teams’ 82nd game is in the books? Have the Winnipeg Jets done enough to give them a good shot at securing the division title (maybe even the Presidents’ Trophy too)? Will Chevy regret not taking a bigger swing when the post-season rolls around or can the True Northers get enough secondary offense from the players we’ve got?
Hope you enjoyed the read and feel free to share your thoughts in the Comment section. G’day.
