Winnipeg's window to win is wide open and won't be closing anytime soon

There are few teams in the NHL better equipped to win right now than the Winnipeg Jets.

They have firepower up front, a formidable back end and a Vezina-calibre goalie between the pipes. They have size, they have speed, they have experience. They pretty much have it all. The only problem with having so much talent is finding a way to keep it all.

It’s a problem every team would like to have, but it’s a reality that puts pressure on the Jets to get it done this season ahead of the salary cap reckoning that’s coming next summer. The Jets currently have seven restricted free agents and three unrestricted free agents due up with just over $20 million in cap space to play with.

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Patrik Laine needs a new deal, so does 30-goal man Kyle Connor and top-pairing D-man Jacob Trouba — none of which will come cheap. Laine, according to TSN’s Darren Dreger, could be looking at upwards of $11 million per and realistically shouldn’t settle for a penny less than $10 million. Connor is a little trickier to predict now, but if he puts up around 30 goals and 60 points again a deal similar to Nik Ehlers’ ($6M annually) seems like a reasonable starting point. And we all know how valuable top-pairing right-handed defencemen are, so Trouba should also command at least $6 million.

Even if the Jets let Tyler Myers walk in free agency (no small loss), re-sign third-liners Andrew Copp and Brandon Tanev to slight raises and fill out the rest of the roster with league minimum contracts, Winnipeg will still be several million over the cap (for the purposes here we set the cap at $82.5M, a $3 million increase from this season).

So tough decisions are coming, but it’s not nearly as dire as some may think.

It’s entirely feasible for the Jets to get under the cap without sacrificing any core pieces if they offload Mathieu Perrault and his $4.125M cap hit and pay someone to take the final year of Dmitry Kulikov’s $4.3M deal. Losing Perrault and Myers will hurt (Kulikov not so much) in the short term, but the Jets have plenty of talent knocking on the door.

Jack Roslovic, Winnipeg’s first-rounder in 2015, looks ready to take on a bigger role. Sami Niku, who was named the AHL’s top defenceman last season at the age of 21, has impressed in camp and should be a full-timer next year. Then there’s 2017 first-rounder Kristian Vesalainen, who was one of the top scorers in Finland last season and only just turned 19.

With the way they’re set up, the Jets have plenty of runway to win a Cup in the coming years. They truly won’t run into cap trouble until after the 2020-21 season, and even then they could still have a ridiculous young core of Scheifele, Laine, Connor, Ehlers, Trouba, Morrissey, Connor Hellebuyck and the previously mentioned prospects if they get creative.

It’s a similar scenario to what the Blackhawks went through at the start of their three-Cup run. Like the Jets, Chicago reached the conference finals after not making the playoffs in years. The year after, they won the Cup on the backs of their young stars supplemented by some quality vets. The following year they had to ship out a bunch of important pieces to stay under the cap, which set them back for a few seasons before they went on to win two Cups in three years. And that was with less talented rosters than what’s brewing in Winnipeg.

The Jets would obviously welcome the same fate, and they’re set up to do it, but that’s easier said than done in a league where injuries, regression and a little bad luck frequently wreak havoc, not to mention the fact Winnipeg has to go through the gauntlet that is the Central Division.

That’s what makes this season so important. Winnipeg’s window isn’t closing anytime soon, but it might not get any more open than it is right now.

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