Grading the 2025-26 Winnipeg Jets season using a Mach 10 system

An eggcorn is a word or phrase mistakenly altered from the original, but which still makes logical sense to the user. A good example is “card shark,” which makes sense, but the true phrase is “card sharp.” So, when I say that the Winnipeg Jets were officially eliminated from the 2025–26 playoffs on April 13, 2026, putting the proverbial “death nail” on their season, what I mean to say is “death knell.”

What is intended and what gets done, like an eggcorn, is a good theme for this Winnipeg Jets team. The Presidents’ Trophy-winning club had lofty aspirations this year, but something got lost in translation.

Tangentially, another example of good intentions gone awry is the Winnipeg Jets’ house band, Mach 10. Intended to be a blend of live music and nostalgic entertainment, Mach 10 comes across more like your uncle’s garage band insisting on playing at Thanksgiving.

In honor of the well-intentioned house band, we will break down and grade the Winnipeg Jets’ 2025–26 season using Mach designations. Units, players, and coaches will fall into three camps: Subsonic (less than Mach 5), Supersonic (Mach 5–8), and Hypersonic (more than Mach 8). Mach 10, ironically, is the highest designation, and grades will flow in descending order.

Hypersonic

Mark Scheifele — Mach 10.4

In the latest Top Gun installment, Maverick pushes his experimental jet to Mach 10.4 before it explodes. There is no better analogy for Mark Scheifele.

Much like Tom Cruise, Scheifele appears to be getting better with age. He currently sits fifth in NHL scoring and just registered his first-ever 100-point season. He is in the top 20 in "Goals Above Replacement" (GAR) and, statistically, had his best season since 2016–17:

Still elite after all these years:

I equate watching Scheifele handle the puck with watching a next-level running back find holes in coverage. There is a cerebral element to his game that makes it exhilarating to watch, and his playmaking is elite. He is in the top five in “High-Danger Assists per 60 minutes” — an accomplishment for which Kyle Connor surely thanks him. Canadian Olympic team snubbing aside, the Winnipeg Jets are in good hands with Mark Scheifele.

Kyle Connor and Gabriel Vilardi — Mach 8.5

Both Jets forwards deserve kudos for their efforts this year. Like Scheifele, Kyle Connor has surged over the past two years:

Connor is closing in on his third 40-goal season, but his improvements have come in his defense and passing. As a consequence, he has developed into a more complete player, even while continuing to crush thespian endeavors. Where Connor excels is in "Entries leading to scoring chances per 60 minutes", where he trails only Connor McDavid. The eye test confirms this. Connor, along with Scheifele, is elite at creating rush chances.

Gabriel Vilardi is the prize at the bottom of the Patrik Laine cereal box. The Winnipeg Jets transitioned Laine into Pierre-Luc Dubois, who in turn was traded for Vilardi and Alex Iafallo. No consolation prizes here. Vilardi will finish the season with career highs in goals, assists, and points, and, for the first time, he stayed healthy for all 82 games. His career trajectory is exciting:

Count me among those who were skeptical of Vilardi’s ability to produce outside his pairing with Scheifele and Connor. While his production predictably showed, Vilardi also demonstrated a more well-rounded game and remains a wizard on the power play. Where he excels is on rebounds, as he is one of the top rebound purveyors in the league. Every team needs an elite goal scorer in tight spaces, and Vilardi fills that role in spades.

Supersonic

Josh Morrissey — Mach 7.5

Not much needs to be said about the Jets’ All-Star defenceman, as he was steady as usual. While his point production dipped, he scored more on fewer shots, to the point that he posted the highest shooting percentage of his career at 9.8 percent.

While not a lockdown defender, Morrissey was once again near the top of the league in scoring chance contributions per 60 minutes. He continues to be the backbone of the Jets’ defense, and even in a year when the club took a clear step back, his game rarely wavered. Morrissey may not have reached the offensive heights of his breakout campaign, but he remained the team’s most reliable two-way defenseman, logging difficult minutes, driving transition, and serving as the connective tissue between the Jets’ top players and the rest of the lineup.

Morgan Barron, Elias Salomonsson, and Cole Koepke — Mach 7

I call this category “pleasant surprise.” Salomonsson got his start through sheer injury luck, and my thoughts on him are here, but the impression thus far has been very positive:

Barron and Koepke are ideal fourth-line forwards in that they are fast, adept on the forecheck, and a general nuisance to play against. Koepke is especially interesting in that he is a restricted free agent, but if the Jets can keep him at his $1 million salary, that is a win for both sides.

Subsonic

Nino Niederreiter, Vladislav Namestnikov, Dylan DeMelo, Alex Iafallo, Neal Pionk, and Adam Lowry — Mach 5

This is our “aging stalwarts” category. All six players are under contract through next year, so all six will be part of the Jets’ plans for the immediate future. Injuries aside, nobody from this group played above average, but all six are paid to be above-average contributors relative to their market value.

The average age of our “aging stalwarts” is over 32, and they combine to account for 27 percent of the Jets’ cap space next year. The Jets have recorded 589 total points thus far this season. The combined point total for this group is 114, representing 19.4 percent of the team’s production.

This, to me, is the biggest issue facing the Winnipeg Jets. The organization is paying veteran players to form the sub-core of this team, and from a trajectory perspective, the arrows are pointing downward. Adam Lowry was quite good in 2024–25, but he was miscast in a second-line role and took a step back this year. Further, I understand that Niederreiter, Namestnikov, and Pionk all suffered extended injuries, but isn’t that what happens to older players? The Jets are in real danger of aging themselves out of contention.

Dylan Samberg — Mach 5

What happened here:

Samberg’s offensive prowess seemed to crater in 2025–26, and it is unclear why. His early-season injury is the lowest-hanging fruit, as he hasn’t looked the same since his return, but why are his defensive numbers comparable to last year? Samberg is, and should be, a significant part of the Jets’ future, but there is an unmistakable sense that this season stalled some of his momentum.

Cole Perfetti — Mach 4

Perfetti deserves his own consideration. The 10th overall pick of the 2020 draft just finished his fourth full season as a Winnipeg Jet, and to put it bluntly, Perfetti ain’t it. He shows flashes of elite playmaking and, statistically, has proven to be a good defender, but he is not what the Jets need him to be.

I understand that injury derailed the first part of the season for him, but with every great “flashed potential” game comes two more in which he is almost invisible. There is talent there, but he reminds me somewhat of Alexander Burmistrov — another stout top-10 pick with clear skill who never manifested into what we thought he would be. There was a rumour that the Jets were shopping him at the trade deadline, which the Jets should explore further heading into golf season.

Connor Hellebuyck — Mach 5 and Eric Comrie — Mach 3

Despite his injury in November, Connor Hellebuyck played 57 games for the Jets — the fifth-most at the position. Hellebuyck usually ranks in the top three in games played, but this slight dip should not disqualify us from evaluating this season as anything but a full one.

As such, his 2025–26 campaign was a disappointment. Coming off Vezina and Hart Trophy wins, anything short of a repeat performance was going to be scrutinized negatively. But in addition to posting his worst goals-against average since 2018 and the lowest save percentage of his career, Hellebuyck also finished 21st in Goals Saved Above Expected (GSAE). GSAE is a stat Hellebuyck has dominated for years, to the point where they should name it after him. There was an even greater dip in performance since the Olympic break, and the Jets’ recent game against the Philadelphia Flyers, where he was pulled after two periods, was the nadir. Let’s hope this year was the anomaly and not the beginning of a trend.

By all accounts, Eric Comrie is a well-liked and affable member of the Winnipeg Jets. However, when given his spotlight, we were treated to some of the worst goaltending I can remember in a Jets uniform. In all, the Jets’ goaltending, once a beacon of excellence, was a liability this year.

Scott Arniel and Kevin Cheveldayoff — Mach 3

Why did the Jets choose to go old and slow, and why did the coach not adapt to this new reality?

This season exposed the limits of both the roster-building philosophy and the bench management behind it. Cheveldayoff doubled down on experience, size, and familiarity, building a team that looked increasingly ill-equipped to keep up with the pace of the modern NHL. The result was a roster that lacked secondary scoring, lacked speed, and had almost no margin for error once injuries hit. That is not all on the general manager, but a large portion of it is.

Arniel, meanwhile, did little to counteract those shortcomings. The Jets too often looked like a team committed to playing one way regardless of whether the personnel could still execute it. There was not enough adaptation, not enough creativity, and not enough willingness to shake the machine when it became obvious that it was sputtering. The forecheck lost bite, transition play bogged down, and the offensive ceiling remained capped, yet the overall approach remained stubbornly familiar.

Jonathan Toews and Gustav Nyquist — Mach 1

Let’s play a game. It’s a game I like to call “James Wright or Gustav Nyquist?” If you recall, James Wright was a speedy centreman who played for the Winnipeg Jets between 2012 and 2014 and had the misfortune of not being very good at hockey. The question is this: which player, in his final season as a Jet, played in over 50 games and failed to register more than one goal? You get my point.

Having hometown idol Jonathan Toews back and playing in a Winnipeg Jets jersey was objectively cool. Captain Serious was here to bring a Stanley Cup-winning mantra and sensibility to this Jets team. It turns out that a three-year absence from professional hockey, combined with a sojourn to India, is not conducive to NHL success. I applaud Toews for having the fortitude to stick to his convictions, and I applaud the Jets organization for facilitating his desires, but this experiment failed.

Logan Stanley and Luke Schenn — Mach 0

Nothing else needs to be said here.

Still on the runway are the likes of Brad Lambert, Isak Rosen, Brandon Yager, and Nikita Chibrikov. The sample size is too small to make any definitive declarations as to their impact this year, or their likelihood of success in the future. Lambert and Rosen have looked like bone fide NHL players at times, but relative neophytes at others. The key is that, at the very least, they are being given an opportunity to show what they can do at a NHL level.

A lack of secondary scoring, a lack of speed, and goaltending woes can all be posited as the main reasons the Winnipeg Jets became the fifth team in NHL history to win the Presidents’ Trophy and then miss the playoffs the following season. A fourth issue was the December–January collapse. A 0–7–4 stretch left Winnipeg last in the Western Conference and 11 points out of the second wild-card spot. It was too much to overcome.

The Winnipeg Jets have been a very successful regular-season team over the past three years combined, but they are at a crossroads. This offseason will be critical to the Jets’ long-term success. If the issues above are not addressed, the excellent contributions of the Jets’ top-end talent will become, to use an eggcorn, a mute point. Correction: a moot point.

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