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Winning games, building identity: 5 takeaways from Jets' perfect start to 2024-2025

21 October 2024Last Update :
Winning games, building identity: 5 takeaways from Jets' perfect start to 2024-2025

WINNIPEG — Bryan Little’s humble, team-first approach to hockey often defined Winnipeg’s identity as a team and a city alike.

His willingness to put others in the spotlight in place of himself, while quietly putting in character-defining hours of hard work, presented Winnipeg to the world in the way this community most wants to be seen. A unique, 588-game-long alignment — on top of 356 games with the Atlanta Thrashers, the franchise’s previous incarnation — wherein an athlete and his community were mirror images of each other was, and remains, a gift.

Now he’s on a quest to build an identity of his own.

“For my whole life, everyone — including me — saw me as a hockey player,” Little said Sunday. “I’m not quite sure what I’d be doing if I didn’t have triathlons.”

Little remains an elite athlete at 36, shifting his focus to non-contact sports after an errant shot attempt struck him in the head in 2019. Retiring was never his choice — never a reality he wanted to accept — and giving up control of that is a challenge Little has risen to as he pursues the next steps in his life.

“You’d think a decision (about) health would be easy, but it definitely wasn’t,” he said. “I think I was just searching for someone to say it’s OK and it’s safe, and I could never really find that.”

Speaking to reporters Sunday, Little left the door open to working in hockey in the future. He cracked jokes about his $0 contract. He confessed to feeling out of place in the spotlight before taking to the ice with the Jets before a ceremonial faceoff. His daughter, Parker, dropped the puck. His wife, Brittany, stood with him. And, as Little pulled the puck back from Sidney Crosby and picked it up, the scene looked like many others we’ve seen at Canada Life Centre. Maybe that’s what his 1,000th game would have looked like, or the night he chose to retire, had it been up to him.

Little said his decision to retire as a Jet was easy.

“In my heart, I never left,” he said. “I was always a Jet and this made it official. My heart was always here.”

By the end of his tribute game, the same fans chanting Little’s name during the ceremonial puck drop gave themselves a gift of a different, more vindictive nature.

“Where is Rutger?” the crowd chanted. And then: “Yager’s better.”

There’s a lesson in that — and it says more about Winnipeg than it does Little or McGroarty. If you choose Winnipeg, Winnipeg loves you for life. It is a special badge of respect given to Dale Hawerchuk, Teemu Selanne and Teppo Numminen, re-established when Blake Wheeler and Dustin Byfuglien re-signed with Jets 2.0, and which will presumably be carried on by Mark Scheifele and Connor Hellebuyck.

“This is the only thing I’ve known. This is the only team I played for and I owe a lot to them,” Little said. “This isn’t just where I worked. The people around here were my family and my friends. A lot of the best memories I have playing hockey were with this team and in this city and in front of these fans.”

And that’s lesson one of Winnipeg’s 2024-25 season. Whatever is happening around the Jets, their roster or their prospects, Jets fans are always at the heart of the story. With a 5-0-0 start to celebrate — and some clear strengths and weaknesses to dissect — here are five takeaways from Winnipeg’s perfect start to 2024-25.

Scheifele, Connor and Vilardi are winning games and the first line hasn’t clicked yet

When Mark Scheifele tied Sunday’s score 2-2 with a rebound goal, it was the first time all season Winnipeg’s top line of Scheifele, Kyle Connor and Gabriel Vilardi were all on the ice for a Jets goal.

Scheifele helped kick-start his own score-tying goal by joining Josh Morrissey and Dylan DeMelo for a battle below the Jets’ goal line — a three-on-three battle Scheifele won by getting inside position on Noel Acciari, scooping the puck to Connor and then taking off. Connor angled Acciari off to get the puck out of the Jets zone and then ate a check as he put the puck back onto Scheifele’s stick.

When the Jets were taking it to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the first and third periods of Winnipeg’s fifth straight win, Connor was on his defensive horse, too. Some of his trackbacks to the Jets’ zone won Winnipeg the puck, helping his line keep a clean defensive sheet in the game. Even after Connor’s pass, Scheifele was knocked over by defenceman Ryan Shea, but Vilardi’s puck support ensured the Jets kept possession. Scheifele was then cross-checked to the ice by Ryan Graves but got up just in time to bat home Colin Miller’s point shot to tie the score.

Player Goals Assists Points
Mark Scheifele
5
3
8
Kyle Connor
4
1
5
Gabriel Vilardi
0
3
3
GOALS AT 5v5
ASSISTS AT 5v5
POINTS AT 5v5
Mark Scheifele
1
0
1
Kyle Connor
1
0
1
Gabriel Vilardi
0
1
1

If you’ve been paying attention, you know Scheifele and Connor are scoring almost one goal each every single game.

Scheifele scored a power-play goal against the Edmonton Oilers to open the season. He scored Winnipeg’s overtime winner against the Chicago Blackhawks after tying the score with just over a minute left in the third period. He’s scored twice at six-on-five, including this end-of-period set play against the Minnesota Wild the Jets have been trying to execute for years.

Connor has been almost as productive, with power-play goals against Edmonton and Minnesota along with Sunday’s opportunistic six-on-five one-time blast. Again, though, he’s been limited to one five-on-five goal in Winnipeg’s 8-3 rout of the San Jose Sharks on Friday.

What are we meant to make of all this?

In my opinion, two things are true: Connor, Scheifele and Vilardi are helping the Jets win games. Scheifele in particular has appeared to put the team on his back at key moments. And: They haven’t been that good at five-on-five. The scoreboard with all three players on the ice is 2-1 opponents and the shot clock is 39-32 in favour of the other guys, too. The Jets have been a good five-on-five team overall, but their top line has saved its best and most dominant work for special occasions. This echoes last season, when all three players were productive but they ended up outscored by two goals when playing together as a line.

Sunday’s goal against Pittsburgh didn’t come in a perfect game. Scheifele’s defensive zone giveaway to Crosby helped create Lars Eller’s second goal of the game by hemming the Jets in their zone for a long shift. We might not see them outscore their opponents this season as a line — and this will test Scott Arniel’s problem-solving ability — but Connor, Scheifele and Vilardi are still driving wins in an overall sense.

Ehlers is also driving wins, but …

Nikolaj Ehlers has two goals and five assists for 7 points. He is tied with Josh Morrissey for second place in Jets scoring, 1 point behind Scheifele for the lead. His two goals helped key the Jets win against San Jose. Connor’s goal against Pittsburgh, built on the penalty Ehlers drew and the pass he made, was one of a pair of goals he created.

Ehlers finished the Penguins game with 13 minutes of ice time, dropping his average to 14:45 — a career low. His first couple of games were not very good, and his line went through some soul-searching before its explosion against a depleted Sharks roster. Let’s also be clear that Ehlers has “only” 2 five-on-five points himself and that the Jets are led on that front by Mason Appleton (5) and Neal Pionk (4).

It is still worth noting Ehlers’ minutes haven’t gone up despite his addition to the top power-play unit. His line with Vladislav Namestnikov and Cole Perfetti is the team’s third line to start the year.

Samberg and Pionk are getting it done

Dylan Samberg has been a force on the Jets’ penalty kill, as we knew he would be. He’s getting clears, denying zone entries and blocking shots as well as he ever has, and I see a breakout season in store for him.

His partner Neal Pionk has been fast and aggressive at the blue line, helping Winnipeg turn defence into offence. He’s also picked up a goal and five assists so far this season, leading to a stat line that looks great by traditional stats — 6 points, plus-three at five-on-five — and fancy stats alike. (Pionk had a tough night in his own zone against Chicago but is second only to Morrissey in Game Score among Jets blueliners, per Dom Luszczyszyn.)

For me, the obvious signs of Pionk at his best come at the Jets’ blue line. Pionk is an asset if he’s reading the play well, moving his feet well and combing those two skills to shut down entry attempts — and maybe even throwing a big hit or two along the way.

Power play is for real; PK is a work in progress

Winnipeg’s penalty kill managed to be the last one in the NHL to give up a goal this season. I’m going to chalk that one up to team discipline.

The Jets’ 18 PIM are the fewest in the league. They’ve been short-handed only eight times and have been scored on twice — once by ex-Jet Tyler Toffoli, once by ex-Jet Kevin Hayes. They’re going to need more practice before Dean Chynoweth’s high-pressure system bears fruit.

The power play has been the best in the entire league. Winnipeg has scored seven goals in 16 attempts — 43.8 percent — and the visuals support the results. Both units generate entries more often than not. In the zone, both units create plenty of motion. Davis Payne has given Winnipeg attacking options from both flanks, with all players open to multiple ways of attacking. The Scheifele-to-Vilardi-to-slot play is still there. So is the option where Vilardi finds Connor across the ice. But Ehlers has posted up beside the net and looked for Scheifele in the slot or Vilardi backdoor, too.

Winnipeg is also scoring pretty ones with barely any zone time at all.

Hellebuyck + Comrie = goaltending success

The superstar goaltender without a backup plan and the backup whose summer plan was to come home to Winnipeg are off to great starts in goal.

Hellebuyck is proving critics wrong — again. Eric Comrie has won his first Jets start, making 39 saves in the process. The only team with a better save percentage than Hellebuyck and Comrie’s combined .946 so far this season is the Dallas Stars — the team whose 10 points tie Winnipeg atop the NHL standings.

The Jets’ perfect 5-0-0 record would not be possible without big breakaway saves by Hellebuyck against Chicago and Minnesota and Comrie’s workhorse night against Pittsburgh.

“I’m super happy to be back and play in front of these guys,” Comrie said after Sunday’s win. “These guys are awesome. This group is unbelievable. I don’t think people understand how good they are in front of you, how much they buy into the system, how much they believe what Coach is telling us. It’s rare to have that when the whole team buys in — it’s really special.”

(Photo of Bryan Little: James Carey Lauder / Imagn Images)

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