No, your eyes do not deceive you. I, Scott Maxwell, am writing a positive article about the Winnipeg Jets. Or am I?

Those of you who follow our power rankings on the Daily Faceoff know that I’ve been pretty mean to the Jets this season, and for good reason. This is a team currently ranked 15th in 5v5 expected goals per 60 minutes, 21st in 5v5 expected goals per 60 minutes, 22nd in 5v5 expected goals share and third in the PDO. Even if they are still a playoff-caliber team, they are not playing well enough to justify their start and will likely regress at some point.

But despite this, they became the first team in NHL history to win 15 of their first 16 games. This is an unprecedented start, and to attribute it solely to luck would be to damage the parts that make the bus tick. So what plays a big role in their success? Let’s find out.

Big guns score a lot of goals

A big reason for the Jets’ early season success was how good their offense was. Not only do they rank first in the league in the number of goals per game with 4.56, they are also the leader with a significant difference of 0.43. They scored more than twice as many goals as the Anaheim Ducks, an offensive team that allowed just 2.20 goals per game. To better understand the facts of how many goals Winnipeg scores, the last time a team averaged 4.5 goals per game in a season was the Los Angeles Kings in 1988-89.

A big reason for that was the play of the Jets’ top stars. Kyle Connor has long been the team’s best striker and has now scored 11 goals in 16 games, making for 56 goals on the year. Mark Scheifele is generally one of the team’s top point-producers and is currently on the best pace of his career, scoring 21 points in 16 games. Josh Morrissey, who has truly developed into one of the league’s best defenders, is scoring over his point-per-game pace with 17 points (like Neal Pionk, but more on him later). Even the often underused Nikolaj Ehlers in Winnipeg has 20 points in his contract year.

This definitely won’t last long. Scheifele and Ehlers are both shooting over 20% (23.7% and 20.9%, respectively), and Connor has the most respectable metric of the three at 17.7%, which is still 2% off his career pace. over 9. All three forwards have on-ice shooting percentages of 15.58%, 17.05% and 17.55%, while Morrissey’s is lower but still at 12.7%. They will regress at some point, but you can’t deny that they are scoring a lot of goals at the moment and that is a huge reason why they are where they are now.

Connor Hellebuyck does Connor Hellebuyck’s work

Hellebuyck entered the season with one of his best performances to date in the 2023-24 season. Among goaltenders with more than 30 starts this season, he ranked first in save percentage with 0.921%, first in Delta Fenwick save percentage with +1.55%, and first in goals saved above expectation with 39.35. If you want to dig deeper into his GSAx, he saved nearly 10 more goals over the course of a season than Jordan Binnington, the second-best goalkeeper in that statistic. Vezina really had no choice that season.

Somehow he’s even better this season. He increased his save percentage to 0.934%, his dFsv% is at +2.38% and he has already saved 13.32 GSAx; If he plays 60 matches again this season and maintains this pace, this rate will reach a tremendous speed of 61.48. He also still ranks first in the league in both save percentage and dFsv% and second to Lukas Dostal in GSAx; So it’s easy to argue that he’s the best goalkeeper in the league again this year.

Some may view the Jets’ defensive play as a big reason for their early season success, but I think their league-leading 2.13 goals per game is largely due to Hellebuyck. When you’re only 21st in expected goals against 60 in 5v5 and you allow more expected goals than you produce, that’s not good defense. And when Hellebuyck is dominant on the field despite those chances, that’s the type of play that will likely earn him another Vezina, and if that level of play for the Jets continues despite the underlying numbers, it could even earn him the Hart Trophy award.

Hellebuyck is unlikely to continue his play at such an extreme level, but he looks poised for another excellent season of goaltending. This is the kind of play we should expect from him as he ranks fourth in save percentage and first in GSAx since his breakout season in 2017-18. He is arguably the best goalkeeper in the league at the moment, but his lack of a play-off resume will definitely sway that debate in favor of Andrei Vasilevskiy.

Second power play units were as successful as their first

I’ve pointed out so far how much of the Jets’ success comes from producing top players and one of the best goaltenders in the league playing like one of the best goaltenders in the league. Not exactly breaking news, right? I’m sure you’ll be even more surprised to learn that my final point is about how great their power play, or more specifically their second unit, is.

In addition to having the highest scoring offense in the league, Winnipeg also has the best power play at an extremely efficient rate of 42.2%. By comparison, the Edmonton Oilers’ record-setting power play in 2022-23 was at just 32.4%. While some of this was due to their top unit consisting of the aforementioned Scheifele, Connor, Ehlers, and Morrissey, as well as Gabriel Vilardi, their second unit also featured Neal Pionk, Cole Perfetti, Nino Niederreiter, Vladislav Namestnikov, and Alex Iafallo. It produces and is probably even better.

The respective players in the second group have 17, 13, 12, 12 and 6 points this year, but five, six, three, six and five of these points came from the power play. That doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you consider the amount of ice time spent by the top players (who average 66.91% of their power plays) compared to the second unit, it’s a bit more impressive for what they do.

To further illustrate this, among the Jets 10 regular power play players, the top four players in power play points per 60 minutes are players from their second unit: Namestnikov (17.97), Perfetti (16.98), Iafallo (14.83) and Pionk. (14.03). Niederreiter, whose score rate is 7.85, ranks eighth in the team. For what it’s worth, their second power play unit is actually producing at a higher rate than their first unit so far this season, or at least more efficient in terms of ice time.

Of course, this production will not last long for both units. At this point the Jets are producing 16.4 expected goals per 60 on the power play but only 8.5 expected goals per 60. This will happen when your first unit scores automatically and your second unit scores goals just like the first unit. , but eventually they will both calm down and find themselves producing at a more normal rate moving forward.

I hate to rain on the parade of Jets players and fans, but unfortunately this run will come to an end at some point. Based on our recent history Teams with regular seasons at this levelThey can’t win the Stanley Cup during the salary cap era if they don’t have the underlying numbers to back it up, so even a long playoff run is still not guaranteed for this team.

But that doesn’t undo what happened before. They’ve already built up a massive six-point lead over every other team in the league, so much so that it’ll be hard to see them drowning enough to miss the play-offs, and they probably won’t need to get to 100. % over the rest of the season to win the President’s Trophy. And right now it’s because they play with electric power, as well as their best players up front and on the court.