With the Ottawa Senators in Winnipeg this past weekend Sens GM Pierre Dorion became the most watched man in the city as he took in a few Jets and Manitoba Moose games. It ramped up speculation that the Jets will be major suitors for at least one, if not more, of the Senators’ big three free agents.
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Best Fit
According to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, Mark Stone would be atop the Jets’ list. That’s no surprise. There’s not a team in the league that wouldn’t be upgraded with Stone on the roster. The Jets could sorely use his services to spark the offence on their second unit. What Stone has accomplished this season on a line with two extremely young players in Colin White and Brady Tkachuk has been impressive. If he could do the same thing with Patrik Laine the Jets would be fierce.
But acquiring Stone would come with the potential to bruise an ego or two inside the Jets’ dressing room as his arrival would shuffle at least one of Winnipeg’s top wingers to the bottom of the deck.
With Stone in the Jets’ top-six one of Nik Ehlers, Kyle Connor or Laine would likely find themselves dropped to the fourth line. It’s possible one of those players could play alongside Adam Lowry, but his line with Mathieu Perreault and Brandon Tanev is providing consistent shutdown services as the third unit so there’s a good chance head coach Paul Maurice would choose to keep them intact.
If that’s the case the fourth line would be the landing spot for a player who scored 29, 31 or 44 goals last season. Hardly ideal for the sacrificed player.
A demotion in that case sends the message the team feels (at least for now, maybe longer if Stone were re-signed) its chances of winning are better with one of them playing reduced minutes. For a player like Ehlers, a man the Jets have already committed to long-term, that wouldn’t be an easy message to swallow. In the cases of Connor and Laine, it would be a sour note to end on as both players head into this off-season as restricted free agents.
Acquiring a centre would be a much cleaner move and create fewer unknowns because it’s happened before. That player would replace Little on the second line the same way Paul Stastny did last season. Little, ever the team player, handled the move down the lineup with the utmost professionalism and the team thrived.
Of course this entire point would be moot if the Jets included Ehlers, Connor or Laine in a trade for Stone. That would be a steep price to pay indeed.
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Power play punch
You have to think the Jets’ interest in Stone would be peaked not just for the potential he would bring to the second line, but also his work on special teams.
Winnipeg’s once-dominant power play has been firing blanks for some time now. Earlier in the season Blake Wheeler was setting his teammates up at will with Laine and Mark Scheifele benefitting the most. But it’s clear the league has dissected the Jets’ scheme and the opposition is now consistently denying passes to those players by collapsing in on the middle lanes.
Replacing Connor (the side-of-the-net option) with an elite passer like Stone could re-open those options from a different vantage point and make it harder for opponents to cheat the pass to Laine and Scheifele.
Power play importance
If this latest Jets slump has proven anything, it’s how important the power play has been to their success.
The team has gone seven straight contests without a power play goal and lost five of those games, with both wins coming in tight games off late third period goals. This is the problem with losing the offensive cushion the Jets were enjoying as a result of early power play success. Comfortable wins become tight ones, and tight wins can easily turn to losses.
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