Winnipeg Jets deep dive: Mark Scheifele and Kyle Connor's chemistry, an update on defence

The day Scott Arniel was introduced as Winnipeg Jets head coach, he was asked about his failure in Columbus. What lessons had he learned from one and a half losing seasons behind the Blue Jackets bench — and his ultimate firing — all of those years ago?

“There’s a few. I think I went into Columbus as a young, green coach. You think that maybe you have all the answers,” he said.

Arniel reiterated his early stubbornness when speaking to The Athletic in September.

“Part of the problem in Columbus is that I did try to do everything,” he said.

There were other lessons — Arniel has said he didn’t build enough rapport before making big asks of his Blue Jackets squad — and they all pertained to that same stubbornness.

How easy it would have been to talk about learning those lessons and then revert to old ways when shifts didn’t go as planned.

Instead, Arniel’s development has continued since the season started. He can identify times wherein he would have gotten a bit more heated in his approach in the past but has run with new ideas instead. After Sunday’s optional practice, Arniel spoke about the nuance of knowing when to push his players harder and when to take a different approach.

“There’s situations where you just have to read the room and (understand) when the timing is right,” Arniel said. “Sometimes if you wait to the next day and they have to think about it for 24 hours, then you kind of jump on it the next morning and it sometimes has a little bit more meaning with video behind it.”

He also shared that he doesn’t go into the dressing room after every game.

“Sometimes after a game, you just let it fester … And it’s been great, because our leadership has stepped in and taken over and maybe had their own little talk,” Arniel said.

There haven’t been too many opportunities for Arniel to rage against the machine he’s built. Winnipeg is 26-10-1, tied with Vegas for a league-best 53 points but ranked second by way of points percentage. The Jets’ late-November, early-December angst appears to be history, too: Winnipeg has won three straight games and, while this week presents a back-to-back against Nashville and Colorado, the Jets’ schedule gets easier soon afterward.

Let’s start the week with a look at an item Arniel is getting right, a confusing depth chart on defence and the top line.

In defence of the old school: The top line in top flight

When a player takes a centring pass and banks the puck off the endboards to himself instead of shooting, he’s either made a bold decision or something has gone wrong. When that player is in the middle of a 10-goal, 18-point run in his last 12 games, it’s Mark Scheifele playing at the height of his powers.

“I was going to shoot it and then it kind of hit their stick,” Scheifele said. “I just wanted to keep the possession going. (Kyle Connor) does what he does best and got open. He’s obviously fantastic, and I’m always happy to find KC in the slot.”

There is an obvious, old-school truth to Scheifele and Connor — the two of them have chemistry — which has irked some people who take a new-school, analytics-heavy approach. If they have chemistry, the math-folk argue, then Connor and Scheifele should consistently outscore their opponents — and, in most seasons, they haven’t.

Scheifele and Connor are enjoying the best five-on-five goal differential of their careers together, allowing us to bridge the gap between analytics and the eye test. Because of course they have chemistry. They think the game in a similar way, sharing a mutual understanding of who will be where and when. Connor is great at jumping into space and Scheifele is great at protecting the puck until the right moment to make his pass. Scheifele in particular will tell you about their chemistry any time you ask — and often when you don’t — and, if you’ve played any amount of hockey and gotten an “I know what my teammate is going to do” vibe, you can see that Scheifele and Connor have it.

The sticky wicket has been their defensive impact. Add up all seven seasons they played together before this one and Winnipeg lost their minutes. Most often, this is because their defensive weaknesses — chasing offence in transition, even when the puck was not safe — compounded to put their defencemen on their heels, creating rush chances for opponents.

We’ve seen it this season, too, but mostly we’ve seen them cook.

This analysis is partly Gabriel Vilardi erasure; Vilardi is having an excellent year, helping a line that was outscored last season win its minutes. Give Scheifele and Connor their due, though — each is on pace for career highs in goals and points and they’re doing it while driving wins, too.

An update on the defence: Stanley and Heinola

It would be wise to start this section with some stats that put this heated debate in context.

The Jets have outscored their opponents 6-1 with Ville Heinola on the ice and 10-6 with Logan Stanley on the ice at five-on-five. Each player has his limitations. Stanley has struggled mightily on the penalty kill and Heinola made a few inexperienced mistakes in Saturday’s game against Ottawa. It’s possible (and probably for the best) that neither plays big minutes in the top six come playoff time.

But neither is setting Winnipeg’s playoff ambitions on fire. Third-pairing defencemen are supposed to have weaknesses. They’re also supposed to be sheltered — protected from top competition as Stanley and Heinola have been — and deliver positive results because of that sheltering. Stanley and Heinola have done that.

Give Winnipeg’s coaching staff credit here.

According to PuckIQ, Arniel and Dean Chynoweth have kept Stanley, Heinola and Dylan Coghlan as far away from elite competition as possible. When Arniel references a “big three” on defence, he’s talking about Josh Morrissey, Dylan DeMelo and Neal Pionk — and would be talking about Dylan Samberg, if he were healthy — because those are the defencemen trusted to play the most amount of time against the Nathan MacKinnons and Connor McDavids of the world.

This is good bench management and it shows you who the Jets do and don’t trust. Whether or not you agree with them dressing Stanley or Heinola, the Jets are using them in as sheltered a role as possible. This is also why we should be cautious when praising them too heavily for their plus-minus, even as Haydn Fleury has been torched — Fleury’s job on the second pairing with Pionk was a lot harder than the role played by Winnipeg’s third pair on any given night.

It’s also a great reminder that Samberg has had a phenomenal start to his season, not only climbing the Jets’ depth chart but delivering the best shot share of any Jets defenceman. Pionk’s numbers fell off when Samberg got hurt and Fleury was asked to play a more difficult role than was ideal for him.

What does all of this mean for Stanley and Heinola, though?

At five-on-five, they’re two of the coaching staff’s least-trusted defencemen to play top competition — yet they’ve also earned some of the lowest shot shares on the team. Back when Fleury was limited to a sheltered, third-pairing role, his shot share was closer to 50 percent — well clear of Stanley or Heinola. If the playoffs started today — and if Samberg were healthy — Winnipeg would probably be best suited by a Fleury-Miller third pair. This would make Stanley and Heinola Nos. 7 and 8 on Winnipeg’s depth chart, and they’ll likely be lower after deadline day.

Enough stats for a moment.

In the first period against Ottawa, Heinola made a smart play that showed his limitations and then made a mistake that showed his inexperience. The smart play was establishing a boxout against Senators forward Ridly Greig early in a defensive zone shift. Multiple Jets coaches and defencemen have told me they like to start a boxout early — well in advance of a shot — and it’s easy to see how digging in early helps tie players up sooner while keeping them further away from the net. In this case, Greig got a stick on the point shot all the same; Heinola’s decision-making was excellent and his battle level was high but he wasn’t strong enough to eliminate Greig from the play.

Later in the same frame, Heinola got caught on the ice for a 1:19 shift, partly because Rasmus Kupari dropped the puck to him on his way off the ice. Heinola sought to key a breakout, then curled to the left wing boards — the far side from the bench — before trying a pass that didn’t work. The scrambly play that followed led to Nick Jensen’s penalty and no harm in the end; just a moment of danger a 23-year-old defenceman will likely learn from.

Later in the game, Stanley was victimized for both Senators power-play goals. He’s been on the ice for eight five-on-four goals against in 38 and a half minutes, which is the worst goals-against-per-minute rate on the team.

This is Ottawa’s first goal — a great passing play, first and foremost, exacerbated by Stanley’s slow attempt to block the pass. I don’t see a shoulder check that might give him a view of Tim Stützle darting into open space, but the problem is that Ottawa makes a great play and Stanley is slow to react.

Not an ideal player to leave wide open 🤧 pic.twitter.com/3OKYxIIIQZ

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) December 29, 2024

“That whole play, you have to be ready for that,” Arniel said after the game. “Those low plays, you’ve got to be down and take that ice away.”

Stanley can be a mean player in front of the net at times, at one point cross-checking Brady Tkachuk to the ice while fighting for space in the same game. On Ottawa’s second power-play goal, I don’t think Stanley realized Thomas Chabot’s shot was coming in. Instead of tying up Greig’s stick, Stanley pushed off of Greig and left him space to make his play. It came with the secondary effect of screening Connor Hellebuyck by playing so close to him.

Ridly Greig makes it 2-0 with a deflection on the powerplay! #GoSensGo

Greig is having a game. pic.twitter.com/E1uqzOY9Nb

— Everyday Sens (@EverydaySens) December 29, 2024

“That was a quick shot — I don’t know if everyone was expecting that to come,” Arniel said. “I don’t think Helle even saw any of that as it came in.”

Greig had gotten free from Heinola at five-on-five, despite Heinola’s battling; he got free from Stanley on the power play, despite being the only threat in front of the net at that moment. Neither scenario is ideal and neither defenceman is excelling in his sheltered role. I continue to have higher hopes for the 23-year-old Heinola than the 26-year-old Stanley but neither is likely to be a key contributor this season.

In the third period, Heinola took a penalty by taking himself out of position in trying to pick off a pass and Stanley made a good heads-up pass slightly behind Nikolaj Ehlers that led to Winnipeg’s fourth goal.

The season-defining stretch between today and 4 Nations

“We’re still first in the league, so we’re doing alright.”

That was Cole Perfetti, to me, before Winnipeg’s back-to-back wins against Minnesota and Toronto. I’d asked Perfetti to share his views on the team’s fall from record-setting excellence to its slightly above .500 early December slump. I didn’t think it was fair to overreact to the losses, just as I didn’t think it was fair to hand the Jets the Stanley Cup when they were 14-1-0.

About the schedule then. You may roll your eyes now, just be clear that you’re rolling them at me. According to HockeyViz, Winnipeg’s schedule overall is average in difficulty. It’s about to get a lot simpler, with 10 of Winnipeg’s 14 games in January coming at home, so let’s keep that in mind if the Jets start 2025 with a bang.

For a while, though, it was miserable — 13 games in 22 days, with 10 of them involving travel. I wanted to know how the fatigue of playing 13 games in 22 days between Nov. 22 and December — a span in which the Jets went 6-6-1 — actually affects a hockey player. Plenty of data shows teams fare poorly on the second night of a back-to-back or at the end of three games in four nights.

“We were working hard, but sometimes you make a couple of mental errors or your brain slips for just half a second,” Perfetti said. “That’s all it takes in this league for someone to make a play around you and for them to put the puck in the net.”

“That’s what happens when you get tired. It’s human nature,” he said. “When you get tired, mentally you start to …”

At this, Perfetti gestured with his head as if to hesitate, thinking about a play.

“Now, all of a sudden, in that half second of me thinking about it, that guy’s gone. It’s such a fast league that half a second means the world.”

I was reminded of Perfetti’s words when Ehlers described the highlight-reel play he made to Vilardi on Saturday night.

Ehlers told me he saw the lane to Vilardi open up on the shift before this one.

“It started on the shift right before that. I took it to the net and got two, three whacks at it, but I also saw Gaber was back door,” Ehlers said. “If I could get it there I knew that we had a good chance of putting it in the back of the net, so I told Gaber to be ready for it.”

How often do midgame reads like that lead to big plays?

“All the time,” Ehlers said. “You study video before the game, but situations change all the time. One guy might be a step lower, a step higher, a step more to the left or right. It’s different all the time. When you get out there you obviously want to get the power play going right away, but you also learn every single shift you go out there for the power play.”

Whether it’s a half-second faster or slower or a single step to the left or right, Perfetti and Ehlers are each talking about the tiny details that lead to huge moments in a hockey game. I sometimes think that we in the media, or I as a writer, don’t do a good enough job conveying how the little things work — how a subtlety in stick angle, body position or a fraction of a second can dictate results.

The Jets might be in tough against Colorado on the second half of this week’s back-to-back. After that, though, Winnipeg plays 17 games in 38 days leading up to the 4 Nations Face-Off — 12 of them are at home, there’s only one back-to-back and there’s no stretch of three games in four nights.

If the Jets are for real, if we’re truly watching a contending team, then they will win those half-seconds and half-steps between now and the February break.

(Photo of Kyle Connor and Mark Scheifele: Dan Hamilton / Imagn Images)