Projecting the Winnipeg Jets’ opening-night roster in 2024, 2025 and 2026

The deeper into the offseason we go, the more likely it is that Nikolaj Ehlers starts the 2024-25 season on the Winnipeg Jets roster and that a Rutger McGroarty trade draws out, perhaps until the trade deadline.

Ehlers is scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent next summer, leaving open-ended questions about his future in Winnipeg. The Jets explored trade possibilities this summer, particularly in the lead-up to the draft, but ultimately changed tack. Kevin Cheveldayoff and Scott Arniel have each spoken to the effect that Ehlers is “a big part” of the organization’s future, implying the possibility that he will sign an extension this year.

Even if a Connor Hellebuyck and Mark Scheifele-type extension is not in the cards, Ehlers’ future is the biggest question facing the Jets’ opening-night roster.

The team’s ability to sign him (or trade him at the deadline, like the Jets did with Andrew Copp in 2022) will answer enormous questions about Winnipeg’s Stanley Cup odds in the future, too. McGroarty’s ultimate landing place is up in the air as well, despite the short-term clarity of him preparing for his third year at Michigan with or without a trade.

But Winnipeg’s long-term future depends on the answers to so many more questions than that.

In today’s piece, we’re projecting the Jets’ opening night roster — not only for the Oct. 9 season opener in Edmonton but for 2025-26 and 2026-27, too.

When will Brad Lambert, Elias Salomonsson, Colby Barlow and Nikita Chibrikov make their names in the NHL? Will Chaz Lucius find good health and reclaim his trajectory as a top prospect? The Jets also have key decisions to make with Cole Perfetti’s RFA contract, Ehlers and McGroarty’s futures and the team’s identity under Arniel. Kyle Connor’s 2026 UFA eligibility looms large; the Jets will go big in their efforts to retain him. Gabriel Vilardi is still developing and will undoubtedly earn a big raise next summer.

All the while, Winnipeg will be pushing to find the 5-to-10 percent improvement that helps push a team with a high floor through the NHL’s ultimate ceiling. Is there a Stanley Cup to be won in Winnipeg — and if so, how?

Step by step, decision by decision, with aging curves considered for and against Winnipeg’s top players, let’s project the Jets’ future for the next three seasons.

Opening night 2024-25

I have made the following executive decisions:

• Winnipeg will run 13 forwards, seven defencemen and two goaltenders.
• Perfetti will sign a two-year, $3.5 million AAV bridge deal comparable to the one Vilardi signed last summer (despite my advocating otherwise).
• Brad Lambert, Nikita Chibrikov, and other young threats to win a job will start the season in the AHL.

This team begins the season with $3.8 million of cap space — after our imaginary $3.5 million AAV deal for Perfetti — and I hope this proves a key point. Despite inefficient contracts on the roster (Neal Pionk and Alex Iafallo), despite two big raises (Scheifele and Hellebuyck), and despite two buyouts (Nate Schmidt and Blake Wheeler), the Jets are in great shape from a cap perspective.

This could impact a lot of people. The Jets don’t need to dump contracts just to make space, meaning Pionk, Iafallo and other veterans are safe. Their contracts don’t need to be “cap efficient” — they just need to find a way to help the team.

Cheveldayoff told me at development camp that Winnipeg won’t fill its empty cap space just for the sake of it. He seemed to be preaching caution about big-ticket end-of-summer acquisitions (and it’s true that big-ticket end-of-summer acquisitions are rare.) This should mean opportunity for youth, even if Ehlers (and McGroarty) trade talk continues to lose steam.

Let’s talk about youth, then.

A long-term contract for Perfetti is completely within Winnipeg’s ability to sign. Shane Pinto’s two-year, $3.75 million AAV extension in Ottawa? Easy. Even Quinton Byfield’s five-year, $6.25 million AAV extension would be no sweat at all. Perfetti might pay a 5-foot-11 tax on his contract but his 75 career points come in hundreds fewer minutes than Byfield’s 88 or Pinto’s 70 points. There is also the matter of the Jets needing a win when it comes to the long-term future of its top youth. (McGroarty’s situation may drag on from here but he’s still expected to be moved.)

It also means that Lambert, as NHL-ready as he might be, will have to outplay a lot of people at camp to win his NHL job. The same applies to Chibrikov, who is less flashy but still dynamic — and who makes a lot of hard, effective plays to get pucks out and keep them in. There is even a chance that Lambert’s NHL ascension is delayed by one full season — or contingent upon an injury, like Connor’s 31-goal season was at the same age in 2017-18.

Before you throw your computer or your phone at me for suggesting more AHL time for Lambert, consider Connor’s NHL career. Paul Maurice initially cut him from that 2017-18 Jets club, later citing Connor’s need to be harder on pucks, win more battles and contain more pucks with his unique speed and skill. Connor continues to make up ground in those areas but his board work and defensive play have seldom come close to matching his offensive brilliance.

My guess is that the ideal play is to promote Lambert at such a time his offensive prowess leaves promotion beyond question, while continuing to have conversations with him about the defensive part of his game. I tend to think this part of player development can happen at the NHL, provided a high level of commitment from player and coach and the on-ice awareness to match it. (Even as I debate these topics, it’s clear to me that a Connor-esque trajectory for Lambert, taken 30th in 2022, would be a clear and obvious win for the club.)

This is my way of saying: I could see Lambert being a midseason call-up or an opening-night Jets forward. By 2025-26, etch his name in stone. If Chibrikov continues to progress, it’s easy to see him replacing a more expensive veteran on next year’s team, too.

If I miss wildly with this roster, it will be because one of the young players had a stunning season, the Jets traded Ehlers or Winnipeg found a rare and unlikely offseason addition. A sudden, surprising long-term Ehlers contract wouldn’t change this season’s club but obviously it would improve the future team.

Is it a good team, then? The only changes from last year’s opening night roster are on defence, where Schmidt is replaced by Colin Miller and Brenden Dillon’s absence provides an opportunity for Dylan Samberg. There is inexperience there but quality, too. If Winnipeg can reproduce last year’s early success, then there’s ample cap space (and McGroarty as trade bait) to search for next trade deadline’s versions of Sean Monahan or Tyler Toffoli. I see a playoff team in Winnipeg’s future, although I don’t know how the Jets are meant to catch the Western Conference elites.

Opening night 2025-26

Winnipeg continues to look like a threat to make the playoffs — with or without Ehlers — in 2025-26. With Wheeler’s buyout coming off the books and Pionk eligible for free agency, there’s ample cap space to handle raises for key restricted free agents like Vilardi and Samberg.

It’s hard for me to see how this roster goes deep without substantial upgrades, though.

There is a world in which some of those upgrades come from within, mind you. I haven’t pencilled oft-injured prospect Lucius onto this roster, nor have I assumed that Barlow (19 now, 20 when the 2025-26 season begins) will win himself a job quite this soon. It’s even possible that Ehlers surprises us by signing a long-term extension that helps keep Winnipeg’s forward group looking dynamic and skilled or that Elias Salomonsson, Lambert or Perfetti take the sort of leap that defines the first stage of their careers.

It’s also worth mentioning that my lines are arbitrary. Lambert might emerge as Winnipeg’s No. 2 centre over Perfetti. Either player could end up on the wing, whether on the second line or alongside Scheifele up top. Vilardi could move from Scheifele’s wing to centre, too. Without at least one of those players emerging as a viable option, Winnipeg will be in position to send out more assets for more Monahan-type players in the years to come.

On the prospect front, I’m having a tough time finding the right spot for the NHL-ready Chibrikov, although Morgan Barron is finally freed from the fourth line. Perhaps Barron is forging a path for Chibrikov to follow.

What about the salary cap?

Vilardi will get a big raise and Samberg will get one too, but I don’t see cap hell in this team’s future. Lambert, Chibrikov and Salomonsson will all be on their entry-level contracts. The defence needs an upgrade but everyone signed is on an affordable contract. Hellebuyck’s continued stardom makes Eric Comrie a viable backup now that Kaapo Kahkonen’s one-year contract is over.

There are some question marks about the veterans, though.

I’m not sure what the future holds for 2025 free agents like Iafallo, Pionk, Vladislav Namestnikov and Mason Appleton but it seems at least conceivable that most of them are let go in the name of the next generation. All four are valued by the franchise but Namestnikov is the only one likely to outperform his cap hit in 2024-25; it’s tough to imagine a ton of success signing these players for UFA prices.

It’s probably too soon to start talking about Scheifele and Hellebuyck as concerns due to age, but it’s worth keeping in mind. They’ll each be 32 when 2025-26 begins and each has logged a lot of miles to this point in their career.

The biggest question that will hang over this team is the future of Scheifele’s longtime linemate and Hellebuyck’s longtime fishing buddy, Kyle Connor. It will be the final year of Connor’s $7.1 million AAV contract, signed in September 2019. Over the duration of this deal, all Connor has done is score: He’s eighth in goals and 20th in points in five seasons since it began and not exactly slowing down.

Two-way impact counts toward wins, too, and Connor’s defensive impact is poor, but there’s no way he’s not getting paid a large sum of money as a 29-year-old free agent. I expect the Jets to do everything in their power to retain him when the time comes.

The same applies to captain Adam Lowry, who will be 33 when eligible for free agency when the 2025-26 season concludes. I don’t imagine Lowry getting $3.25 million a year at that time — I think the big, physical centre has started to slow down by this point of his career — but Winnipeg will want to keep him. I could see an extension signed just prior to the start of the season.

Again, the Jets could use more dynamic two-way forwards, like Mark Stone at his peak or Valeri Nichushkin in good health. Their blue line could use a high-end top-four defenceman, particularly on the right side. There are problems here. The floor remains high, though, with quality youth on ELCs supplementing the veterans and players like Vilardi and Perfetti now in the hearts of their careers. The roster I’ve listed could vary wildly in price based on the contract for Perfetti, Vilardi and Samberg (and Ehlers, if somehow that happens) but Winnipeg should have space with which to shop.

My biggest concern is the Connor contract. Players get paid for points and Connor scores a ton of them. Meanwhile, I don’t expect a mid- or late-career defensive renaissance and I remember the decline of Wheeler — who was a dominant as opposed to porous two-way player at his peak. Scheifele’s $8.5 million AAV contract is unlikely to age well over the long run; Connor’s extension will probably cost more and hurt more, too.

But the team needs someone to score and my preemptive concern won’t be as painful in the first years of that deal.

Opening night 2026-27

Scheifele and Hellebuyck will turn 34 this season and I’m worried that at least one of them is a shell of the player we see today.

There is a loss of explosiveness that even the best self-care cannot stop from happening. Scheifele will be able to get by on vision, puck protection and passing — just as Wheeler did before him — but Wheeler was 34 when his stops and starts started slowing down. Wheeler played through cracked ribs and a host of other, unknown ailments that season but was a shell of himself and, while he continued to produce points, never dominated the game in a two-way capacity after that point.

Scheifele is as invested in maintaining his body as any NHL athlete. I firmly believe this. I expect he will get the maximum longevity out of his body and extract its peak performance. He’s not a witch, though, and time will get to him as it gets everybody.

Goaltenders are more difficult to predict. It seems likely that at least some of Hellebuyck’s mid-30s seasons look bad, on paper. We’ve seen it with Carey Price, Henrik Lundqvist and Sergei Bobrovsky — all of whom were once in the conversation for best goaltender on the planet and whose mid-to-late 30 save percentages saw a substantial decline. Roberto Luongo was a pleasant exception to that trend but, if you can make a case why Hellebuyck is Luongo and not Price, you are either being hopeful or Hellebuyck’s agent or both.

Let’s get to the roster.

We’re taking some big swings, here. Lambert has followed 2024-25’s midseason call-up with top-six minutes in 2025-26; now, he’s emerging as a bona fide top-line threat. The problem on his line is on the defensive side of the puck, where Connor-Scheifele-Lambert give up more than their fair share of chances against, too. We’ve assumed that the organization has committed the resources necessary to extend Connor.

We’ve also pegged this as the season that Colby Barlow makes the Jets on a full-time basis. He’ll be 21 at training camp and any misgivings about speed and experience will have been honed through substantial AHL time and short-term NHL stints in previous years. For now, we’ve put him with two of Winnipeg’s strongest playmakers in Vilardi and Perfetti, with either one a viable option down the middle. This line gives up footspeed to the top trio while adding a bit more two-way play.

My hot take in sizing up this forward group is that it suffers from all of the same problems as the current edition does. A lot of the elite scorers will be two-way concerns come playoff time, while the players who never cheat a backcheck might not be counted upon to create offence. Every team could use peak Patrice Bergeron but few would benefit quite as wildly as this group. If there’s a solution outside of sweeping transactions, it likely comes from spreading out the skill sets in the top nine. If Nino Niederreiter can still play at pace, he’s probably the best candidate for a promotion. Chibrikov will be 23 at camp and Barron will be 27; I can’t shake the idea that Chibrikov will someday drive play on a middle-six line but it seems wishful to promise that by 2026-27.

On defence, we’ve promoted Salomonsson to the top pair — his meteoric rise is the one to bet on — while assuming Samberg’s 2025-26 extension was long enough to count on him again. Dylan DeMelo has done yeoman’s work, underrated by many but celebrated by Josh Morrissey on the top pair, but we’re finally allowing for the 33-year-old DeMelo to take a step back.

The $1.25 million extension Stanley signed this summer will expire prior to 2025-26. We’re pencilling physical AHL defenceman Tyrel Bauer into his place and giving Simon Lundmark a job, too, while acknowledging these are ambitious bets. More than likely, the future Jets sign or acquire their version of Colin Miller.

It’s another situation where things look good if Salomonsson can really develop into a top-pairing defenceman while Morrissey is close to the height of his powers and if Samberg and Heinola succeed on the second and third pairs. I think all of those things could happen; betting on all of them to work out perfectly seems wishful.

This also seems like a reasonable year for Thomas Milic (or Dom DiVincentiis) to take Comrie’s backup job, or come close.

We’ve bet on some prospects to hit (Lambert, Salomonsson), others to miss (Lucius, although he certainly has the vision and the skills) and others to make the roster with less of a sense of what their impact will be (Chibrikov). We’ve considered aging curves, both in the Jets’ favour (Vilardi, Perfetti, the aforementioned prospects) and against (Scheifele, Lowry, Hellebuyck, DeMelo).

And I’m still left with a lot of the same concerns I have about the Jets roster as it stands today.

• Where will the playoff-ready two-way play come from? The scorers don’t look like good bets to defend while the defenders don’t look like great bets to score.
• Without a home run trade (via Ehlers, McGroarty or whomever else) and without an impact UFA signing, are the Jets doomed to keep sending draft capital out the door for deadline day veterans? (Extending Ehlers would certainly help on that front.)
• How does this team escape the mushy middle, outside of (good) prospects turning into (spectacular) players?

The Jets’ biggest strengths are their cap outlook, the number of less-than-elite but still-very-good young players on the team and in the pipeline and Hellebuyck — for as long as he delivers first-class results.

It’s a franchise with a high floor and questions as to how they’ll break through, find that 5-to-10 percent they keep talking about and smash through the ceiling. The Jets do sign UFA players every summer but they’re primarily of the Kevin Stenlund and Saku Maenalanen variety as opposed to impact players.

If there’s one thing that’s as true as ever, the Jets need their prospects to make it, they need their youngest players to succeed and they need their mid-20s RFA talent to re-sign in Winnipeg — just as their captain, starting goaltender and No. 1 centre have done.

And if the Cup is in the cards, the Jets will need all of this and more.

(Photo of Nikolaj Ehlers and Connor Hellebuyck: Darcy Finley / NHLI via Getty Images)