Winnipeg is out of ideas; more bad news for the Flyers

Blake Wheeler is no longer the captain of the Winnipeg Jets, and the Philadelphia Flyers might be losing a key player for most of the season

That pretty much sums up the Kevin Cheveldayoff era of the Winnipeg Jets.

When I did my 32 teams in 32 days outlook I examined just methodical the Jets have been under Cheveldayoff’s watch in terms of actively trying to improve their roster. They do not make trades of significance unless somebody asks out. They do not sign free agents. They rarely change coaches.

They simply draft, wait for players to arrive, and hope for the best. They are the most inactive and — let us be honest here — boring team in the league. They just exist.

That same storyline, for the most part, exists going into the 2022-23 season. The roster remains largely unchanged from the one that underachieved a year ago, and while they do have a new head coach in Rick Bowness, that largely happened because Paul Maurice stepped away on his own during the 2021-22 season.

If Maurice had not stepped down, there is a better than zero chance he is still behind their bench this season and even more remains unchanged.

The one big change they did make?

They took away the Captain’s C from Blake Wheeler and are prepared to enter the season with a new leadership structure in place. When teams resort to taking away the captaincy, that is typically a sign that they have no other ideas on what to do and just want to rearrange some deck chairs.