Why The Winnipeg Jets Should Fire Kevin Cheveldayoff

 

The Winnipeg Jets have failed to meet their expectations over the last two seasons in the playoffs, recently being upset by the Calgary Flames, as two of their star forwards Scheifele and Laine went out with injuries. The Jets offense came up short and got outplayed by Calgary this season whereas in 2019 the Jets got beat out by the eventual cup champs the St.Louis Blues. In that series, they lost in six games in a bit of a roller coaster going down 2-0 in the series then, tying up the series 2-2 and lost the next two games while having trouble to score due to Rookie Goaltender Jordan Binnington.

Reason number one to fire Kevin Cheveldayoff; we go back to July 1st, 2015, When he signed Matthieu Perreault to a three year deal for $9 million, and it only got worse from there. Perreault, in his first year with the Winnipeg Jets, had 41 points in 62 games which isn't horrible but has had only one full season with the Winnipeg Jets back 2018-2019. A majority of Jets fans agreed his struggles with injuries and lack of scoring (never recording more than 45 points over five seasons) made the winger a disposable piece. However, in 2019, Chevy re-signed him for four years at $4.33 million per, with a no move or trade clause. 

The next reason for Chevy's dismissal should be his inability to make good deadline deals. Out of all his moves, the consensus is only a few were wins for the Jets. The first trade that actually did work was the Paul Stastny trade in 2018 which was instrumental in their playoff push where they just couldn’t get through the Vegas Golden Knights. The only other good deadline trade that actually helped the Jets was the Zach Bogosian trade where they acquired Brendan Lemieux, Joel Armia, Drew Stafford, Tyler Myers, 2015 1st Rounder (Jack Roslovic) but as time would tell only one player out of that trade is currently on the team and that is the player that wasn’t guaranteed in this trade as he was sent as a first-rounder. The results of the trade also shows how bad Chevy is at keeping around good players for example; Joel Armia (trade), Tyler Myers (free agency), Drew Stafford (free agency), and Brendan Lemieux (free agency).

Reason number three to fire Kevin Cheveldayoff, his free-agent signings: The first awful signing was when he signed Steve Mason in 2017 for a two year deal worth $8.3 million with an AAV of $4.15 million. In his first and only season with the Jets in his 13-game tenure, he went 5-6-1 with a .906 SV% and a 3.24 GAA. After that one season, he made a horrible trade and it was used as a cap offload where he sent Joel Armia, Steve Mason, 2019 7th,2020 4th for a prospect named Simon Bourque. Simon Bourque has not played a single game in any Jets Organization that means no ECHL, AHL, or the NHL.

The fourth and final reason is that he has made few to little good decisions when it comes to the NHL Draft. For example, in 2016 he had the 2nd and 16th Overall Selections and he made two picks that would now be considered as the wrong choices one more than the other. Patrik Laine at 2nd Overall wasn't a horrible pick but if I were the GM I would much rather have Pierre-Luc Dubois originally selected at 3rd overall. Another good choice would be Matthew Tkachuk originally picked by Calgary at the 6th Overall. Then we move on to the 16th overall pick where he selected defenseman Logan Stanley who hasn't played a single NHL game yet. Some better choices would have been Sam Steel (30th), Henrik Borgstrom (23rd), even defenseman Dennis Cholowski (20th). Cholowski would have been a great pick cause he would help fill the hole on the defense which was created by Chevy with his horrible resigning ability losing 3 right-handed defensemen Trouba, Byfuglien, Myers. 

Written By: Brody Neufeld