Better luck next year: Will the Winnipeg Jets get the message?

Their best player and most important player seems really upset with the current state of the team, and he is not wrong. This is also a big problem for Winnipeg.

Welcome back to Better Luck Next Year, a series that will focus on each team as they get eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. What went wrong, why it went wrong, what (if anything) went right, and what is next. We continue today with the next team to be eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention: The Winnipeg Jets.

The Winnipeg Jets joined the wrong type of club when they became just the fifth Presidents’ Trophy winning team to come back the next season and miss the playoffs entirely.

They didn’t just miss the playoffs, either. They missed by a lot.

They were eight points short of a playoff spot, in a watered down Western Conference where the cut-line to get in was only 90 points. It was not a high bar to reach, and it should have been one that was easily reachable for a team that finished with 116 points the previous season.

Of the four other Presidents’ Trophy winners that missed the playoffs, none of them had a bigger drop-off in points from one year to the next than Winnipeg did, and only one missed the playoffs by as wide of a margin.

• The 1992-93 New York Rangers finished 26 points worse than the 1991-92 team, missing the playoffs by eight points.

• The 2007-08 Buffalo Sabres finished 23 points worse than the 2006-07 team, missing the playoffs by four points.

• The 2014-15 Boston Bruins finished 21 points worse than the 2013-14 team, missing the playoffs by just two points.

• The 2024-25 Rangers finished 29 points worse than 2023-24 team, missing the playoffs by six points.

• Winnipeg finished 34 points worse than the 2024-25 team, missing the playoffs by eight points.

Read that again. Thirty. Four. Points. Thirty-four! Three. Four.

That is a stunning, and largely unprecedented collapse from one year to the next for a team that was that good.

What has to be maddening about it for Winnipeg fans that have been paying close attention, and perhaps even to some players in that locker room, is that it is not hard to see why and how it all happened.

I have written this about the Jets many times in recent years, but they are one of the teams that has been hurt by the curse of elite goaltending.

They have one of the best goalies of this era in Connor Hellebuyck on their roster, and they have had no issue riding him as far as he can take them for the better part of the past decade. He plays more games than any goalie, more minutes than any goalie, faces more shots than any goalie, and is by pretty much every objective measure one of the most productive, most impactful and best goalies in the world.

He is a three-time Vezina Trophy winner. He won the MVP a year ago in what was one of the best single-season goalie performances of the past two decades.

That type of goaltending masks a lot of flaws and can lead to a lot of wins. And because the team is winning, management does not always feel the need or pressure to dig into the problems as much as it would if it were losing.

This is the curse.

Great goaltending makes average teams think they are better than they actually are.

Poor goaltending makes good teams think they are worse than they actually are.

The Jets, for much of Hellebuyck’s tenure, have fallen under the first umbrella here.

They do not always defend well in front of their goalie and have a tendency to give up a lot of shots and chances. They have some high-end players at the top of the roster, but not great depth. Their 5-on-5 process is rarely among the best in the league, and is usually closer to the bottom.

It always comes down to “our goalie is better than your goalie, and we’re just going to let him win the game for us.”

All of those same flaws existed this season, and were only enhanced through what can only be described as an awful offseason from general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff and his staff.

Winnipeg lost a couple of really strong contributors from the 2024-25 team, and none were bigger than forward Nikolaj Ehlers following his free agency move to the Carolina Hurricanes.

Their big offseason addition to help replace that? Bringing 37-year-old Jonathan Toews in as part of his comeback attempt, and so that he could play for his hometown team. Toews had not played in the NHL for two full seasons, and was not particularly good the last time we saw him in the league as a member of the Chicago Blackhawks.

That was one of their big moves, and they counted on him to play what was basically a second-line center role. He not only failed to make the team better, he was arguably one of the worst 5-on-5 players in the NHL this season.

It was just a brutal offseason showing by a management team that never seems to be proactive, never seems to know its flaws, and never seems to act quickly enough to fix them.

It not only resulted in a bad year, it also resulted in Hellebuyck absolutely eviscerating the front office and throwing down the gauntlet for what they need to do this offseason.

It was harsh. It was fair. It was also totally understandable given everything he has done for the franchise and how much he is lifted it up.

What made all of this worse is that Hellebuyck himself had a down year by his standards. Not a bad year by any means. Just not up to his normal level. He missed some time due to injury, he was not quite 100 percent at times, and he was just a little off his game from what we normally see.

By save percentage and goals saved above average, he was basically league average. By goals saved above expected, he was a little above average (+5.5 goals saved above expected). Certainly not the sort of thing that should have sabotaged a season, and certainly good enough to at least compete with. But the Jets couldn’t. They couldn’t compete with a league average goalie, and the rest of the team’s performance was so awful that an average goaltending performance resulted in a 34-point drop in the standings.

The Jets need to take that seriously.

They need to take Hellebuyck’s comments and criticisms seriously.

They need to understand that this season was not the fluke, and they need a lot of help and a lot of major improvements if they are going to be a playoff team and a contender anytime soon.

They already failed to deliver a championship caliber team around Hellebuyck throughout most of his prime years.

Now they are running the risk of him getting tired of it and forcing his way out while he still has a few prime years remaining.

Let’s talk more about all of this a little more.

What went right this season