Brock Nelson? MacKenzie Weegar? What would a 'perfect' Jets trade deadline look like?

Winnipeg is better positioned to compete for the Stanley Cup this year than last. In a best-case scenario, its trade deadline will reflect that.

A best-case, blue-sky Jets wish list is straightforward to compile. Start with a fast, veteran second-line centre who can produce offence while playing a playoff-caliber 200-foot game. Add a veteran top-four defenceman who can win net-front battles, protecting Winnipeg from the high-slot deflections, crease crashing and rebound goals that beat them in recent playoffs.

Let’s start with the vitals. One year ago, the Jets’ top-end talent didn’t score as much as they score now. They didn’t defend nearly as well. But the Jets doubled down on Kyle Connor, Mark Scheifele and Gabriel Vilardi as a line this season. The bet was that the trio could keep scoring goals while giving up fewer counterattacks for free; opposing coaches had started to line-match their top scorers against Winnipeg’s stars.

That bet works in Winnipeg’s favour now.

Offensive and defensive ratings via The Athletic’s player cards

The Jets’ top line gets outshot but has control of the most dangerous areas of the ice: Connor, Scheifele and Vilardi have given the Jets a 33-25 lead at five-on-five on the back of 54 percent of expected goals (in addition to their power-play brilliance). That’s the stuff of Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen or Jack Eichel and Mark Stone — a bar that was too high to clear just one year ago.

This creates opportunities for management. The Jets roster does have weaknesses but its depth remains a strength. But Connor, Scheifele and Vilardi are giving Winnipeg a better reason to believe in playoff potential than they did one year ago — and they went all-in back then, adding Sean Monahan, Tyler Toffoli and Colin Miller.

What should top the Jets’ wishlist this season?

Here is one version of a “perfect” trade deadline: three acquisitions that could help Winnipeg compete with Colorado, Vegas, Dallas, or whichever team comes its way.

No. 1: A big, strong, crease-clearing, PK-ready, veteran top-four D with plenty of physicality

There is an element missing from Winnipeg’s defence corps. Josh Morrissey is an elite, two-way defenceman worthy of his consecutive top-10 finishes in Norris Trophy voting. Dylan Samberg is big, makes great defensive reads and can handle tricky defensive coverage against elite forwards. Neither are brutal players by nature, nor is Logan Stanley who’s been Winnipeg’s most consistent attempt at a third-pairing left defenceman.

Stanley offers a certain type of physicality but is miscast as an enforcer. He’s big and a heavy hitter, willing to lay lumber on players in front of the net, but he doesn’t tie up enough sticks to take away scoring chances. Stanley’s mishandling of a bouncing puck led directly to Vancouver’s only goal on Tuesday. His erroneous pinch against Los Angeles on Friday gave Phillip Danault a breakaway. There is an ideal form of Stanley’s career arc — Jamie Oleksiak in Dallas, who overcame these types of mistakes to become a stalwart top-four defenceman — but Oleksiak was delivering top-four results by 25 years old. Stanley is 26, turning 27 in May: ideally in the middle of a long playoff run.

The Jets are in a tough spot, though. Stanley’s physicality is unique on the Jets roster. Scroll through Winnipeg’s fight card on Hockey Fights and Stanley leads all Jets with three fights, but then it’s Lowry with two and Connor, Scheifele, Alex Iafallo and David Gustafsson with one each. Brenden Dillon has left a void, and whether or not you demand fighting and physicality from your favourite hockey team, it’s abundantly clear the Jets believe in its importance.

If Stanley continues to make mistakes that lead to goals against — and if his physicality is meant to give the Jets a pugilistic option outside of Lowry, who they need on the ice — then Winnipeg needs someone else who can drop the gloves.

The answer isn’t coming from the right side. Dylan DeMelo, Neal Pionk and Colin Miller all hit players with a similar frequency to Stanley — DeMelo and Miller more often, Pionk less — without the punishing effects. They protect the middle of the ice better, though, and aren’t as prone to the slow-moving gaffes that lead directly to as many Grade A scoring chances. DeMelo’s game is rounding into better form after a middling start, while Pionk has looked like his best self since Samberg’s return to the lineup. Miller is a capable No. 5 and that’s fine, but none of them are hitting as hard as Stanley does or taking fights away from Lowry.

That’s why blue sky player No. 1 is big enough to win his physical battles, strong enough to lay punishing hits when the time is right and makes his reads well enough to tilt the ice against playoff competition. In an ideal world, he kills penalties (well), can move well enough to handle playoff pace, and will drop the gloves when needed: essentially, Dillon with better pace. If he plays on the right side, he’s effective enough to give Winnipeg the option of playing him in the top four (or to make the third pairing hum no matter who plays beside him). If he plays on the left, he’s the obvious choice to end the Stanley vs. Haydn Fleury vs. Ville Heinola debate on that side of the ice, claiming the third-pairing job while getting a heavy dose of PK minutes.

The incredible thing is that players like this do move at the trade deadline. Edmonton picked up Mattias Ekholm plus a sixth-round pick from Nashville in 2023 for defenceman Tyson Barrie, prospect Reid Schaefer and draft picks in the first and fourth rounds. Last season, Dallas picked up Chris Tanev from the Flames in a three-way trade with Calgary and New Jersey that cost the Stars prospect Artem Grushnikov, a second-round pick and a fourth-round pick. (The Stars would have given Calgary a third-round pick, too, had they made the Cup final.) Ekholm continues to deliver sandpaper and stalwart defending for Edmonton, while Tanev signed in Toronto and is as competitive as ever at 35 years old.

Who is this year’s Ekholm and Tanev, then?

The bluest of skies on that front is named MacKenzie Weegar, although it would be remarkable if Calgary gave up on one of the most effective pieces of its retool. The Flames cling to a wild-card spot right now and Weegar, 31, is having a big influence on that. He’s in the second year of an eight-year contract that pays him $6.25 million per season — abundantly affordable now, although one wonders about the long term — and he’s having a tremendous impact playing shutdown minutes at five-on-five and on the PK alike. The right-handed defenceman is playing on his strong side on Calgary right now and is on a hitting spree, something he says is always the case for him when he plays on the right.

In a “perfect” scenario, Weegar plays with Morrissey on the Jets’ top pair, giving Winnipeg the option of running Samberg-Pionk and then DeMelo with their choice of the right-handed Miller or lefties Stanley, Miller or Heinola on pair three. Try to ignore his absence from The Athletic’s trade board as you come up with your own combinations, but Weegar can do all of the things Winnipeg might need.

There is another less thrilling but similarly physical player available: Rasmus Ristolainen, the bruising 30-year-old right-hander who has resuscitated his career in Philadelphia. The Flyers have helped Ristolainen become a patient, positional defenceman who chases hits far less often than he used to in Buffalo. They’ve also managed his minutes, keeping him at a respectable 21 minutes per night instead of the 25-plus scenario that overwhelmed him with the Sabres.

The result of all of this? A 6-foot-4, 208-pound defenceman who picks his spots and protects the middle of the ice. I wouldn’t confuse him with a ready-made shutdown option for the top pair but Ristolainen has emerged as a dependable No. 4 or No. 5 option; the Flyers give up less with him on the ice at even strength and on the PK than they do without him. His $5.1 million contract is a potential sticking point, given there are two years left on it beyond this one. The Jets have ample cap space, so it’s possible that the contract just serves to lower Philadelphia’s asking price (or make it more likely that the Flyers retain money on the deal.) There are other depth options on the market ranging from David Savard to Cody Ceci, but I’m under the impression the Jets like Ristolainen and have for some time.

You might not like the all-righty Miller-DeMelo third pair but it’s harder to imagine Colorado or Vegas getting as many high tips, slot shots and rebounds against this group as they have in the past.

No. 2: A fast, faceoff-winning centre who can produce between Ehlers and Perfetti

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The best-case scenario Jets would add a second-line centre at the trade deadline.

Vladislav Namestnikov gives Winnipeg tremendous value, particularly at his price point, and he’s been more often underrated in the NHL than the other way around. He’s a makeshift solution on the Jets’ second line, though, which is why Winnipeg sent a first-round pick to Montreal for Sean Monahan last year.

The middle six had grown cold prior to Namestnikov’s injury, and his line with Ehlers and Perfetti in particular. Scott Arniel says he’s intrigued by his new combinations, with Ehlers-Lowry-Iafallo and Perfetti-Rasmus Kupari–Nino Niederreiter both generating offence, but Arniel had run the most consistent forward lines of any team in the NHL before Namestnikov got hurt. This probably means that Arniel’s playoffs’ Plan A puts Connor-Scheifele-Vilardi up top and reunites Niederreiter-Lowry-Appleton. Which means Winnipeg’s second line needs help.

The blue sky is a player who does everything Namestnikov does well a bit better than Namestnikov does — and wins his faceoffs, too. Ehlers and Perfetti appear to need a player who bridges their strengths: someone who can play as fast as Ehlers does while making space for Perfetti to create offence with his hockey IQ. This is partly why Niederreiter has worked so well with Perfetti and Kupari — he creates space in the dirty areas, giving Perfetti an extra quarter second to work with, while Kupari’s speed creates chaos and helps knock down pucks.

Enter Brock Nelson, the surprisingly fleet-footed 6-foot-4 Islanders centre who has averaged 71 points per 82 games in his last three seasons. Admittedly, Nelson is scoring a little bit less for the Islanders this year, but his average footspeed would put him second to Connor among Jets (and his top speed would tie with Connor for third). He’s winning 54 percent of his faceoffs this season, despite being below 50 percent over the course of his career, and he’s on pace for 48 points in a down year after scoring over 30 goals in three straight seasons.

Nelson isn’t an elite defensive centre at five-on-five but he creates more than he gives up and can score in all sorts of different ways. He’d also be playing a slightly more sheltered role on the Jets’ Ehlers-Perfetti line compared to the heavy lift he has in New York. He plays both special teams in New York and would be an option on their respective second units in Winnipeg, too.

The truth is that Nelson would be an enormous swing. The pending UFA makes $6.0 million — a cap hit Winnipeg could afford — but will be a top commodity on a thin market for centres and has a 16-team no-trade clause. The 33-year-old Minnesotan might need to be persuaded that the Jets were an ideal spot from which to contend, if a trade were to be had.

There’s a chance the Jets go after a centre further down the lineup — perhaps one that costs fewer assets to acquire (or none, aside from cap space, in the case of 36-year-old Jonathan Toews.) If so, there’s a chance Winnipeg gets out of the deadline without trading a first-round pick at all, but we’re choosing to make the blue sky acquisition here. Winnipeg would do well to keep its scouts armed with first-round picks but seasons as good as this one is are rare.

It’s tough to force Morgan Barron out of the starting 12, but this Jets forward group would thread the needle between being stacked and filling the Jets’ pre-established roles. There is an obvious set of two scoring lines and two shutdown lines available.

No. 3: A fast penalty-killing forward who will drop the gloves if the top-four D doesn’t

If the Jets do manage to shop in the luxury aisle and pick up a player like Nelson, they will have added a penalty killer and this item won’t apply. If not, then they’ll have the opportunity to pick up a crash-and-bang player who can kill penalties and who will also drop the gloves when required. A fourth-line, penalty-killing option like 27-year-old pending UFA Mathieu Olivier (who fights quite often) would be easier for Jets coaches to protect from elite competition than a third-pairing defenceman. Trent Frederic also appears on our trade board and while the optics of acquiring the player who knocked Gustafsson out could be difficult, he offers a ton of physicality from a middle-six role that puts him clear of Olivier.

There are lots of ways to add a physical element in spot duty if the Jets want to augment Stanley and Lowry in that role or limit Stanley to the press box. Pat Maroon may yet become available. Cody Ceci is meant to be on the market. Barclay Goodrow fights a bit but doesn’t drive wins anymore and costs $3.6 million for another two seasons after this one.

Summary

This isn’t the same as last year’s piece, written shortly before the deadline, that correctly predicted the arrival of Tyler Toffoli and a depth defenceman, or its predecessor, which assumed the acquisition of Sean Monahan.

There is a greater degree of fantasy hockey happening here:

The cap hits mostly work, though, even with Ehlers retained: Winnipeg is projected to have just over $11 million to work with at the trade deadline. Weegar and Nelson cost $12.25 million between them, meaning the difference could be covered by moving two fringe roster players. Kevin Cheveldayoff has done a great job assembling a contender in a great cap position; that’s why we can go through this exercise at all.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Jets end up acquiring Ristolainen and a depth forward, perhaps making it through the deadline without moving a first-round pick. The team is well worthy of an all-in approach, even if the Jets ultimately decide most of the answers are already in the room.

(Top photo of Brock Nelson and MacKenzie Weegar: Stacy Revere and Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)