The good news is that the Winnipeg Jets have their cornerstone goalie, Connor Hellebuyck, back in the lineup and apparently at full strength after missing a month due to knee surgery. The bad news is the Jets can't win any games no matter who's in net if they don't score goals. On Wednesday night against the St. Louis Blues, who are terrible, the Jets got stoned 1-0, marking another setback in a year that has so far been a far cry from their Presidents' Trophy–winning 2024–25 campaign.
To focus on the positives for a moment, Hellebuyck was sturdy and sharp in his third game back. He allowed the one goal in the second when an aggressive Blues attack overpowered a sloppy defense, but that's it, so it's worthy of a sigh of relief for Winnipeg that their goalie still looks like the back-to-back Vezina-winning man that he is. Check out the way he repelled this flurry of St. Louis shots midway through the first period, when the Blues were absolutely dominating possession.
Replacing Eric Comrie with Hellebuyck should undoubtedly lead to better results for the 15-16-2 Jets. But that doesn't solve the problems in front of him. Last season, the Jets' offense burst out of the middle of the pack to finish third in the league in goals, riding career-best years from vets like Mark Scheifele and Kyle Connor, plus relative newcomer Gabe Vilardi. That trio is still contributing, as is top defenseman Josh Morrissey, but it looks barren underneath, particularly because of the loss of free agent winger Nikolaj Ehlers to Carolina.
There are teams that could absorb the loss of their fourth-best skater, but Winnipeg really isn't one of them. They're married to this core who've been around for quite a while, because everyone across the continent has basically agreed that Manitoba, as a place to live in the winter, can't and won't be competitive on the open market for talent. The guys that the Jets did add to this roster amount to shots in the dark that unsurprisingly missed. Jonathan Toews, back after two seasons of retirement, is one of the team's least effective players. Gus Nyquist, a name you might vaguely remember, hasn't scored a goal yet. Tanner Pearson is just kind of there.
Coming off that Presidents' Trophy win, and the second-round exit that followed, the Jets' outlook mostly amounted to "Please just do it again, guys. Please?" Instead, even after accounting for the Ehlers subtraction and Hellebuyck's absence, everything feels like it's one notch worse. Winnipeg's got the 10th-best record and a top-eight goal differential in a crowded conference, so a hot goalie run alone could be enough for them to outlast the West's bottom half. But hoping for that outcome is nowhere near as fun as just racking up more wins than anybody else. Maybe it'll be a mild winter.
