Today is American Thanksgiving, often considered the NHL season’s first major benchmark. By late November, approximately a quarter of the way through the season, the sample sizes are large enough that assessment and analysis can be done confidently and conclusions about a team’s potential can be drawn fairly accurately.
It’s also a major point regarding postseason hopes: historically, teams not in a playoff position by U.S. Turkey Day make the postseason only about 25 per cent of the time.
The Winnipeg Jets, at this Thanksgiving threshold, are a puzzling team in a precarious position. At 12-10-0, they are below the playoff line at sixth in the Central Division and three points out of the second Western Conference wild-card spot. They have lost three straight, seven of their past 10, and have yet to reach the level of play they displayed night-in, night-out through that Presidents’ Trophy-winning 2024-25.
Dylan DeMelo may have put it best earlier this week, saying “we aren’t even close to where we need to be to be a successful team,” and “we are exactly what our record says we are. We are inconsistent.”
Here, we’ll assess the Jets’ 2025-26 thus far, which has brought some triumph but also frustration, challenges, and regression across the board.
Jets Have Dealt With Injury Adversity
“We’ve been getting hammered here” is the way head coach Scott Arniel recently described his team’s injury woes.
Indeed, the Jets have played very few games with their ideal lineup because it seems as soon as someone gets healthy, someone else goes down. The played all of October without Adam Lowry, Cole Perfetti, and Dylan Samberg, and while those three have returned, they are now without Haydn Fleury, Neal Pionk, and reigning Vezina and Hart Memorial Trophy winner Connor Hellebuyck. Morgan Barron, Cole Koepke, and Gustav Nyquist have also missed time.
Related: Jets Hellebuyck Out 4-6 Weeks Due to Arthroscopic Knee Procedure
Every team has to deal with injuries, which Arniel also acknowledged, but there’s a limit to how much can be overcome. It’s tough for a team to build chemistry when the lines are constantly in flux, and it takes time even for experienced players to get back up to speed after long layoffs.
5-on-5 Play, Defensive Structure Have Been Inconsistent
The injuries and lack of continuity have clearly played a role in the Jets’ inconsistent five-on-five play and uncharacteristically poor team defence, two hallmarks of their success last season.
“Consistency, whether that’s period to period or game to game, has been something that I’d say… has been lacking,” Arniel said after the 3-0 loss to the Minnesota Wild Sunday night. “We always took a lot of pride in staying in and winning one goal games. Right now, that’s not happening. We’ve got to look first at that.”
The Jets are nowhere close to William M. Jennings Award contention currently — an award they’ve won each of the past two seasons — as they’ve allowed 63 goals, an average of 2.86 per game compared to 2.31 last season. They’ve given up three-plus goals in 14 games, have had far too many breakdowns in general, and have had trouble handling opponents’ speed.
The Jets have not been very good at five on five despite some improvements there since the first 10, when they had the league’s worst five on five expected goals for percentage (xGF%) at 39.52. Unfortunately, we’re already at the point of the season where moral victories don’t matter much — the Jets need points and are not getting many.
They have 49 goals for and 49 goals against at even strength and a 45.23 five on five xGF% to sit 28th in the league. That xGF% is not becoming of a contender, and it needs to get closer to 50 per cent because while the power play and penalty kill are doing well, special teams can be fickle.
Five-on-five is not something the Jets have generally struggled at over the past few seasons; in fact, strong five-on-five play has been a key part of their identity since Rick Bowness came on board in 2022-23 and totally revamped the team’s systems over his two seasons behind the bench. Last season, Arniel’s first, the Jets had a 52.44 xGF% at five on five and a plus-63 even-strength goal differential.
Jets Stars Shining Bright, But Depth Scoring Has Gone Dark
Mark Scheifele and Kyle Connor, the team’s two highest-paid forwards, have been lights out with 23 goals between them and 29 and 28 points, respectively. Gabriel Vilardi, their linemate, has also been great with 10 goals and 18 points after a bit of slow start, while Josh Morrissey is producing more than a point per game from the blue line (23 in 22 games).
The Connor/Scheifele/Vilardi trio, unfortunately, have scored more than 55 per cent of goals by forwards (33 of 59). Production from lines two through four has not been up to snuff — Barron (three goals, none in past 12 games), Lowry (one goal in 10 games), Vladislav Namestnikov (six goals, none in past 10), Nino Niederreiter (four goals, none in past six), Nyquist (zero goals in 17 games), Tanner Pearson (three goals, one in past 16), Perfetti (one goal in nine games), and Jonathan Toews (three goals, one in past 14) are all ice cold. That’s alarming for a team that was dangerous last season in part because it had three or even four lines consistently chipping in on offence.
“We need other people to step up,” Arniel said after the 4-3 loss to the Washington Capitals, where the first line once again produced all the offence. “It’s not about being pretty now. It’s about… I don’t care how it goes in. Off your head, off your leg, however it might be. Rebounds, whatever. Deflections, we’ve got to find a way. The guys that aren’t scoring (need to) find a way to get some offence.”
The Jets are 22nd league-wide in goals with 69 (they finished third last season) and have also been shut out three times already compared to just once all of last season. Arniel made wholesale line changes prior to the game against the Capitals, but he can only use the blender so much. A lot of these veteran guys simply need to play better regardless of their linemates.
Special Teams Faltering a Bit After Strong Start
The special-teams numbers, which were excellent through the first 10 and helped the Jets to go 7-3-0 through their first 10 despite the league-worst five-on-five xGF%, have dipped a bit but are still in relatively good shape.
The power play operated at 27.27 per cent through the first 10, while the penalty kill operated at 90.48 per cent. The power play’s efficiency has dropped to 24.64, still good for sixth league wide. However, it allowed two dagger shorthanded goals during the current losing streak.
The penalty kill efficiency has dropped to 84.21 per cent. That’s also good for sixth in the league, but the regime has given up at least one man-advantage marker in seven of 11 games in November.
Jets Playoff Aspirations Tenuous; Must Raise Their Game Right Away
Last season, the Jets had already banked so many points by Thanksgiving (they were 18-5-0 and first in the Central and the Western Conference) that even a major collapse couldn’t have prevented a playoff berth. This season, the team doesn’t have any margin for error and needs to find another gear right away.
The Jets know the way they have to play to be successful — you don’t finish best in the league by fluke — but why they haven’t committed to that playstyle this season and if they can play to their internal standard more frequently going forward are big questions.
“We’ve shown it in flashes but it hasn’t been consistent,” DeMelo said. “We need to find that consistency, but we are only a quarter of the way into the season here. It’s that point where we need to start stringing games together and we’ll worry about the result. Usually when we’re playing well, we feel confident when we play our game and do the right thing, the result will take care of itself.”
The rest of their 2025 — two more games this month, 14 in December — will go a long way in showing who this incarnation of the Jets truly are and have a massive impact on their already-tenuous postseason aspirations, for better or for worse.
