If there’s a foul smell in the air over Winnipeg for the next few days, fear not. It’s just the residual pungency of disappointment left behind following another half-measured trade deadline.
Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff, though, smells nothing but roses.
It’s a belief so strong that a strategic approach only needed a pair of veteran forwards added to the mix, augmenting a roster that had lost six of its past seven games leading to Friday’s deadline.
The all-in approach much of the fan base, and even Cheveldayoff’s own players were hoping for? That ship never left the harbour.
The Jets shipped out a pair of picks for Nino Niederreiter from the Nashville Predators and Vladislav Namestnikov from the San Jose Sharks: a 2024 second-rounder and a 2025 fourth-rounder, respectively.
Cheveldayoff, meanwhile, watched the deadline pass with nearly $3.4 million left in his coffers, a bit of a mirage, Cheveldayoff said, noting the potential bonuses ($2 million, according to CapFriendly) to be paid out and some wiggle room to call up players if warranted.
Other general managers seem to find creative ways to navigate all of this.
Of course, why spend more if you think the team is already equipped, as Cheveldayoff said he does, to compete for a Stanley Cup?
“The message is I believe in this group,” he said. “We didn’t move anybody out at the deadline. This is the group that got us to this point. We’ve added a couple of strategic pieces that we felt was important and that this group is good enough to take us to the next level.”
In other markets, especially in the Eastern Conference, belief in a team’s chances at hockey’s holy grail led to a massive outpouring of picks and prospects.
That approach was tempered in the West, with fewer teams loading up. But some did, including the Minnesota Wild, who have leapfrogged the eighth-place Jets in the Central Division Standings, adding four pieces to bolster their chances of making a deep run.
The Jets were linked with players aplenty over the last couple of weeks, although Cheveldayoff suggested Friday that many of those were more myth and misinformation than reality.
That’s not to say there wasn’t opportunity, including several players not saddled with no-trade or no-movement clauses.
Cheveldayoff says he faced few, if any, barriers, and was willing to spend draft picks, even his coveted 2023 first-rounder, and prospects — none apparently untouchable — if there was a move to be made.
Even his team’s recent rough patch, where his players did themselves no favours, didn’t factor into his decision-making, he said. He would have done the same, he added, if the team had been on an extended winning streak.
“We were aggressive as we were able to be,” he said.
Cheveldayoff likes the $4-million Niederreiter, a multiple-time 20-goal scorer during his career, and Namestnikov, a versatile, defensive-minded forward with a paltry $1.25 million cap hit.
Head coach Rick Bowness has a history with the latter, having coached the Russian as an assistant in Tampa Bay and then as the bench boss in Dallas last season.
“It’s a good addition,” Bowness told reporters in Edmonton, ahead of Winnipeg’s game against the Oilers on Friday night. “Vladdy, first of all, he’s a great person and a great teammate. He’s a very versatile forward who can play all three forward positions. He can kill penalties, you can throw him into the top six every now and then, and if the power play is struggling, he can help that. It’s his versatility that’s the big attraction to him. Plus, he’s a great teammate and a great person.”
A veteran of 610 NHL games, with 113 goals and 251 points to his name, Namestnikov, slated for Winnipeg’s bottom-six, has six goals and nine assists in 57 games this season.
“I’ve seen him over the years, playing on the power play this season with the big guns in Tampa,” Mark Scheifele said. “Now we have him here, and we’ll see what he’s got.”
Both will make the Jets better. And in a vacuum, both are solid adds.
But is it enough to handle the reigning Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche to potentially emerge from the division?
That’s a tall order.
“You need to construct a team that works well together and you need to construct a team that has cohesiveness,” Cheveldayoff. “It’s not about getting the next new shiny toy. It’s about the pieces that you think that can fit the character and work together with your room. The opportunity for these players to show, this group here, that we believed in can take you to the next level with a couple of additions. That’s what we did.”
Many feel Winnipeg’s window for contention could slam shut as early as next season, with no guarantee of extensions for Scheifele, Pierre-Luc Dubois or Connor Hellebuyck.
One would think, with all the uncertainty and potentially one last kick at the can with this core, you’d go for it.
At least Cheveldayoff could sit there at the end of the year and say, with certainty, that he tried.
Now, he won’t have that club in the bag if there’s an early playoff exit, or worse, the Jets miss the postseason altogether.
sbilleck@postmedia.com
Twitter: @scottbilleck
Post a Comment