Here we are in early August and the National Hockey League’s off-season has slowed down to a snail’s pace, with a whole lot of nothing happening recently. The last Free Agent of note to sign a contract with a new team was Patrick Kane opting to return to the Chicago Blackhawks more than 2 weeks ago.
There are still some Unrestricted Free Agents looking for new deals, though the ones that might be attractive to our Winnipeg Jets are very limited. Forwards like Vladislav Tarasenko, Philipp Kurashev, & Patrik Laine shouldn’t really be targets for GM Kevin Cheveldayoff, I could see the benefit of bringing in one of Eeli Tolvanen or Michael Bunting…..but only if a player like Vladislav Namestnikov or Nino Niederreiter is moved to open up a spot. On the backend, there is still veteran RD John Klingberg or LD Logan Stanley waiting for their next club…but hopefully Chevy knows that neither would be beneficial for the True Northers this season. Really would like to see Big Stan sign a contract soon, so a return to the Peg could be completely taken off the table.
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The Connor Hellebuyck trade talk rumours have dwindled down to almost nothing in the past few weeks…and it has gotten to the point most of the fans on PuckPedia have given up on suggestion trade offers for the 3 time Vezina Trophy winner. There are still the diehard Jets’ & Sabres’ fans that believe one or the other GM will blink first before the season starts, but I think that is a long shot at this point. If either side was going to budge, it probably would have occurred by now. So it will likely come down to how the NHL’s 2026-27 season starts to see if injuries or bad play could open up more interesting parties or convince Buffalo that they need to make a move for Helly.
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Speaking of the 2026-27 campaign, it will be the first under the new agreement that has increased the NHL’s regular season to 84 contests. The switch does make it simpler for the schedule makers, as each club will face their own division 4 times (28 gms), each team in the other division from their conference 3 times (24), and play the other two divisions’ squads twice each (32). That means the only real advantage available for clubs is who gets the extra home game in the 3 game series situations and for Winnipeg, that is versus the Pacific Division. Here is the teams the Jets have the home ice edge on this season:
Anaheim Ducks, Vancouver Canucks, San Jose Sharks, & Calgary Flames
That means the True Northers will have to play the Vegas Golden Knights, the Edmonton Oilers, the Los Angeles Kings, & the Seattle Kraken twice each on the road.
The schedule changes also resulted in a reduction of the Pre-Season games from 6 to 4 matches and initially I never really gave that move a second thought. Yet recently I was reading an article about the Oilers and it happened to mention that “veterans” had to play at least 2 of those 4 games. Since Winnipeg has a veteran-laden roster, that piqued my interest a bit. Previously, NHL clubs had to dress at least 8 veterans for each of the 6 exhibition games to ensure there was enough talent on the ice for the paying fans.
So, if you consider that teams may play goalies for half games early on, lets say that there are 20 roster spots available for each contest and 8 of those had to be filled with veterans, leaving 12 roster spots for young prospects to impress the coaching staff. Since every team pretty much plays their normal starting roster in the final pre-season game, lets go with 5 games for our calculations. 20 spots available for 5 games = 100 spots and 40 (8 x 5) of those had to be filled by “veterans” leaving the coaches with 60 to give an opportunity to the young prospects.
But now with the reduction of games and increase in required “veteran’s“, what is the impact for the youth? Well, we still have 20 roster spots per game, but now are likely down to only 3 where the kids will get a chance to shine, so 60 available spots overall. Now if half of those have to be filled with “veterans“, that leaves only 30 for the non-veterans to get on the ice. A reduction of 50%….that could significantly impact who and how often a prospect gets to have a taste of NHL action in the pre-season.
When it comes to defining “veterans“, the NHL doesn’t make it that difficult to qualify…all you need is to have played at least 30 NHL games the prior season or 100+ NHL games in your career. Using PuckPedia to look at the Winnipeg Jets’ roster, I quickly discovered that our squad has 22 players that meet the criteria. However, Swedish defenseman Elias Salomonsson doesn’t sound like he will be ready to go that early, so that reduces it down to 21. Yet one final caveat in the rules indicates that players who were selected in the 1st round of the most recent draft are also considered “veterans” because of their star power, so Viggo Bjorck will bring that Jets’ number back to 22 again.
44 games out of 80 are to be taken up by “veterans“, leaving Winnipeg’s 20 signed players outside of the NHL (and including Brad Lambert & Jack St. Ivany, who didn’t qualify as vets) fighting for only 36 spots in the pre-season. Not a lot of space to test where guys like Brayden Yager, Kieron Walton, Kevin He, Alfons Freij, Garrett Brown, Colby Barlow, etc are in their development. I guess it is fortunate that while active NCAA players are now allowed to attend training camps with their teams, they aren’t allowed to play in games if they want to play in college this season. Therefore, prospects like Sascha Boumedienne, Edison Engle, & Zach Nehring won’t be taking away any spots from the other kids.
It gets worse in net if the veteran tenders need to get 2 games each (Hellebuyck & Stuart Skinner), as that would leave nothing for Thomas Milic or Dominic DiVincentiis. Possibly a half game would count as 1 game under the rules and that would allow the goalie prospects to each get 30 minutes of exhibition action?
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The international hockey community recently completed their Summer Showcase tournament, which gives the countries a chance to see what players they should be keeping an eye on for their World Junior Championship rosters for the big December/January tourney. One of the Winnipeg Jets many Swedish prospects is fighting for a spot this season after being overlooked in 2025-26 and from the sounds of it he made an impression on the coaching staff. Picking up 2 assists in the short tourney, plus adding an early goal that helped switch momentum in a 5-2 win over Finland, the offensively talented forward was very noticeable. You don’t have to just take my word for it….
#25 Viktor Klingsell, RW: Klingsell is such a smart, skilled forward who has consistently found himself in dangerous scoring lanes. He tallied a goal in the first period to give the Swedes some life, and he also had another good look on a later power play. Klingsell had a good week in Windsor; I think he’ll be a solid middle-six contributor who can be relied on in open ice. Daily FaceOff
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It was a while ago, but the Manitoba Moose ended up signing a forward named Deni Goure to a contract for the upcoming season. At the time, I just entered his name onto my organizational depth chart but never really got around to checking out his history. The 23 yr old went undrafted after a successful Junior career, which included a high of 96 pts in 68 gms in his final campaign in 2023-24. He then has since proved that he can continue to contribute offensively in the ECHL with 104 pts in 135 gms.
While all of that is interesting, what really caught my attention was that Goure was a teammate of fellow Jets’ prospect Colby Barlow with the Owen Sound Attack. In case you forgot, Colby was an absolute sniper in Juniors, scoring an impressive 148 goals in 230 Junior games (0.644 goals/gm)….yet hasn’t been able to carry that over to the AHL yet (8 goals in 65 gms = 0.132 G/gm).
Maybe reuniting with his former linemate and set up man with Manitoba could reignite that scoring spark? Goure has plenty of competition to make the Moose this year, but if you watch the video below you will see that he appears to be good at setting up Barlow’s powerful 1 timer.
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That is all I have been able to come up with in terms of Winnipeg Jets’ news…..so time to sign of by wishing you all a great August. See you back here in September when the hockey action starts up again.
