What we saw and learned on Day 1 of Winnipeg Jets training camp

WINNIPEG — Scott Arniel’s first stint as an NHL head coach didn’t go the way he planned it.

After 45 wins and 70 losses, he was faced with an early exit from the head coaching fraternity he’d worked so hard to join. His players had tuned him out, so the Columbus Blue Jackets let him go halfway through his second season. It took him 12 years to earn a second shot at the top job.

It’s no wonder that Arniel brought a sense of excitement and joy to his first “first day of camp” as Winnipeg’s head coach. It was evident on the ice, palpable in his own interview and powerful enough to leave GM Kevin Cheveldayoff a bit more contemplative than usual.

“Coaches live in glass houses, but they learn from that,” Cheveldayoff said at Hockey For All Centre on Thursday. “They learn their shortfalls and if they’re humble enough, they grow from it. And I can tell that a (coach) like Arnie, during our conversations, sometimes it’s a delicate question you can ask but his answers were full of, ‘I’ve learned now from Rick Bowness. I’ve learned from (Alain Vigneault), I’ve learned from Peter Laviolette.’”

Arniel has conceded that he tried to put his stamp on things a bit too early and a bit too emphatically in Columbus. In Winnipeg, though, he has two years of familiarity with the roster that he inherited from Bowness. He spent the summer in steady communication with his players, even flying to Calgary to meet with captain Adam Lowry and alternate captains Mark Scheifele and Josh Morrissey.

There is excitement here — in Arniel and in new assistant coaches Dean Chynoweth and David Payne.

“They’re all still learning from each other and are going to take best practices from each other,” Cheveldayoff said. “Certainly, for those three guys in the coaches’ room, there’s that level of excitement that you can really tell.”

Great, then. Arniel arrives at training camp with a superb opportunity. What’s he going to do with it?

After Thursday’s full day of drills, conversations with multiple players and news conferences by Arniel and Cheveldayoff, here’s what we’ve learned about the Jets — from Arniel’s line combinations to Cole Perfetti’s future to key roster battles, Brad Lambert’s chances of making the team and Winnipeg’s plans for its first two preseason games this weekend.

Connor, Scheifele and Vilardi are back together

Arniel resisted the urge for roster revolution with his Day 1 lines. Kyle Connor, Mark Scheifele and Gabriel Vilardi skated on one unit on Team Neufeld to start the day. Nino Niederreiter, Adam Lowry and Mason Appleton were together again on Team Lesuk later in the day.

Here’s a full list of Jets forward lines from Day 1, sorted subjectively by me.

Has anything changed at all? It doesn’t take a lot of work to plug Perfetti onto the second line, bump Alex Iafallo to Line 4, knock Axel Jonsson-Fjallby out of the top 12 and see a carbon copy of last year’s lineup.

Arniel was quick to explain the reasoning behind reuniting so many of last year’s lines.

“You know what? It’s just my history on other teams: When those guys can come out in the first couple of days and get their touches amongst each other, it kind of gets them up and running,” Arniel said. “I’ve also seen it the other way where you put a veteran with a couple of young guys and it gets very frustrating.”

Arniel left the door open to change things up, likely after at least one round of cuts had been made. It may be that it’s easier to mix and match NHL players — including those on the cusp, like Lambert — once there are fewer minor league and junior players on the ice. For now, though, it will be more of the same, and it looks as though Lambert, Nikita Chibrikov and other young talent have an enormous task ahead of them if they’re meant to win jobs.

If we do see changes, my guess is that many of the standard Jets duos will persist: Connor and Scheifele could be joined by Nikolaj Ehlers, for example, but I’d be surprised to see them broken up. Lowry and Appleton could see a variety of left wingers, perhaps, but it’s difficult to see them split.

Lambert will fight for a roster spot

There’s no way Lambert will go through training camp without drawing acclaim. He was dominant at rookie camp, scoring three points in two games, and his speed stands out even among established NHL players. Whether he becomes the swingman for a slower, highly intelligent centre like Vilardi, finds chemistry with another speedster like Connor or Ehlers, or both, Lambert is going to impress Jets fans for a long time.

The only question is how soon.

Look at the forward lines above. Knowing that the roster will likely include 13 forwards, seven defencemen and two goaltenders on opening night, whose job will Lambert take? Ehlers isn’t going anywhere at this stage and Perfetti will take a spot in the top six. If Lambert wins a job, bumping Vladislav Namestnikov and Iafallo to the fourth line, the Jets will be forced to waive one of Rasmus Kupari or David Gustafsson. That’s hard for me to envision, given Gustafsson’s time with the organization since being drafted in 2019 and Kupari’s road to Winnipeg via the PL Dubois trade. They’re end-of-the-roster players on a team this deep; I just don’t see them as expendable from Winnipeg’s point of view.

Barring injury (or a stunning length of time without Perfetti), Lambert’s only route to Winnipeg is through a camp so spectacular it forces the Jets’ hand, with highlight-reel goal after highlight-reel goal … or through the Manitoba Moose. Lambert doesn’t require waivers to be demoted. His competition does. If he leaves any doubt at all in the coaches’ minds, assigning him to the AHL will be the easiest path. Players do get hurt. Jobs do open up. Lambert may be destined to follow in Connor’s footsteps, biding his time until seizing an opportunity from which he’ll never look back. He’s the same age that Connor was in 2018 when Mathieu Perreault’s injury opened up an October roster spot. Lambert’s AHL scoring is also similar to Connor’s through the same stage in each player’s career.

Winnipeg will take a long look at Lambert through multiple preseason games and give him every chance. The depth chart makes it obvious though; waivers-exempt players like Lambert and Chibrikov will have to be phenomenal to start the season in the NHL.

Cole Perfetti wasn’t on the ice for Day 1 of camp as he still needs a new contract. (Darcy Finley / NHLI via Getty Images)

The Perfetti negotiations drag on

The moment Perfetti signs his next contract, he’ll emerge as a front-runner for top-six minutes and first-unit power-play time. Each passing moment between today and Perfetti’s next deal creates just a little bit more angst among fans. As negotiations drag on, Perfetti has gone from a tremendous offseason which included workouts with Scheifele, Morrissey and Lowry, to skating on his own in an effort to maintain his progress.

Cheveldayoff, meanwhile, says that he’d give Perfetti whatever he wanted … if only he could.

“Personally, I’d give these guys the moon,” Cheveldayoff said on Thursday. “They’re awesome guys and I’d love to have the ability to pay them everything they want and deserve. In a salary cap world, you have to make business decisions.”

So what’s the holdup?

As Cheveldayoff puts it, negotiations like this one depend on each side making the case for comparables — similar players, at similar stages in their careers — to push conversations toward a contract that everybody can agree on. This isn’t anything new and it’s not rocket science but Cheveldayoff and Perfetti’s agents are having trouble getting on the same page about which players constitute appropriate comparables.

I’ve argued that Shane Pinto’s two-year, $3.75 million AAV contract (signed this summer) and Gabriel Vilardi’s two-year, $3.4 million AAV contract (signed in 2023) make a lot of sense as a starting point. Vilardi had scored 78 points in 152 games prior to signing his deal, worth 4.12 percent of last year’s cap maximum. Perfetti is two years younger than Vilardi was when he signed that contract but has scored 75 points in 140 games — a superior rate. Pinto and Perfetti have each played 140 NHL games, with Perfetti outscoring Pinto 75 to 70 despite being one year Pinto’s junior. In some ways, it seems cut and dry to me: If there’s a bridge deal to be signed, Perfetti’s should be in line with Vilardi’s and Pinto’s — perhaps even higher, if you’re willing to credit him for achieving his point production at a younger age.

I don’t think Cheveldayoff sees it the same way.

“There’s different levels of contract negotiations in this league,” Cheveldayoff said when I asked him about Pinto and Vilardi. “RFAs coming out of their first contract generally don’t have arbitration rights and that becomes a sticking point sometimes. When players do have arbitration and they file, there’s a deadline and there’s a mechanism in place that contracts follow and you work towards that.”

That explanation applies to Vilardi, who had arbitration rights last summer, but not to Pinto this summer. Still, it seems as though Cheveldayoff’s point was that he doesn’t view either player as a direct comparable for Perfetti. Elsewhere in the conversation, he spoke to a preference to focus on players exiting their ELCs and signing their second contract, like Perfetti is.

But most of those players from Perfetti’s draft class — Anton Lundell (six years, $5 million AAV), Seth Jarvis (eight years, $7.42 million AAV), Quinton Byfield (five years, $6.25 million AAV), Lucas Raymond (eight years, $8.075 million AAV) — have signed long-term extensions. Perfetti has played fewer games and scored fewer points than all of the players on that list and comes with less hype at this moment but ranks third out of five in points per game. His camp may feel that it’s reasonable to include him in that group — and ahead of New Jersey’s Dawson Mercer, who has also played more games and scored more points but whose per-game rate trails Perfetti.

It can be awfully hard to convince a GM to pay for promise, based on scoring rates — particularly Perfetti’s top-tier primary point rate — as opposed to results. I’ve still argued that Winnipeg would do well to sign Perfetti long-term before his point totals get too high. Think of Vilardi’s next contract, for example — it’s going to be a lot more expensive than a long-term deal would have been last summer. I think Perfetti is tracking well to make himself expensive on his third contract, despite lower point totals today.

And whatever I think about all of this, one thing seems clear. Cheveldayoff and Perfetti’s camp are further apart in terms of which players constitute fair “comparables.” Anything can change with a phone call but it seems like they have work to do before they get close on a deal. Just remember that this isn’t terribly unusual; Kyle Connor and Patrik Laine missed parts of camp in 2018, while Morrissey missed the start of camp in 2019. It will get done, Perfetti will be welcomed back by his teammates and Arniel will be happy to plug him into the lineup. We wait.

Barring the unforeseen, the top seven defencemen seem clear

Sometimes it’s good to remember that there’s an element of “anything can happen” at training camp. Consider the case of Ville Heinola, who combined his offensive vision with defending that looked chaotic but effective to win a job last season … and then didn’t play a single NHL game.

“Last year, Ville Heinola made our team and then he was gone, broke his ankle and it changes things,” Arniel said.

Heinola can be confusing in the defensive zone, winning battles without ever looking like he’s winning those battles — such is the peril of playing at his size. Last season, he didn’t return to the Jets from his ankle injury or even dominate the AHL when he arrived. He has shown NHL ability and has raised the overall level of his game to the point where a job seems well within his reach.

The Jets ran the following pairings on Day 1 of camp and I think there’s an obvious top seven to start the season.

The Jets will depend heavily on Morrissey, Dylan DeMelo, Neal Pionk, Dylan Samberg and Colin Miller. Two jobs are open and I believe they’ll belong to Heinola and Logan Stanley. If anyone can convince Arniel and defence coach Dean Chynoweth to go in a different direction, it will be Haydn Fleury or Dylan Coghlan, each of whom played NHL games last season.

Fleury, 28, has played 268 games for Carolina, Anaheim, Seattle and Tampa Bay, delivering perfectly adequate results as a third-pairing defenceman. Coghlan, 26, has played 106 games split between Vegas and Carolina, offering similarly solid results for a depth defender. Fleury and Coghlan are not low bars to clear. Both players have kept a cleaner defensive zone than either Stanley or Heinola to this point in each player’s NHL career.

All of this leaves top defensive prospect Elias Salomonsson on the outside looking in — destined to start his North American career in Manitoba after a dominant year in Sweden. All of Fleury, Coghlan, Heinola and Stanley require waivers to be assigned to the AHL. Salomonsson doesn’t.

One change Arniel wants to make?

“We want to try to have a rotation where our seventh guy is getting a little bit more (playing time),” he said.

Hellebuyck and the goalie plan

Arniel wants to have 22 players on the roster: 13 forwards, seven defencemen and two goaltenders.

This follows our pre-camp projections: Connor Hellebuyck will likely be backed up by Kaapo Kahkonen while Eric Comrie mentors Thomas Milic in the AHL and Dom DiVincentiis starts in ECHL Norfolk. It was still funny to hear Arniel’s response when I asked if there’s any chance he keeps three goalies on the roster.

“In all honesty, when you have a Vezina Trophy goalie, I haven’t really thought about the goalies at all,” he said. “It will be where we’re at number-wise when we get to that point. If you have your 23-man roster, you have to look at that as well.”

Kahkonen and Comrie should each get one start this weekend. The plan is for Hellebuyck to get into two and a half preseason games, leaving a couple of more starts for Kahkonen and Comrie to duel. No matter what happens, Winnipeg’s net still belongs to Hellebuyck. It’s easy to see him hitting 60 starts once again.

(Photo of Kyle Connor and Mark Scheifele: Jonathan Kozub / NHLI via Getty Images)