What to Project When You’re Expecting: Winnipeg Jets Pipeline
Welcome to the first edition of “What to Project When You’re Expecting”, a new feature where we breakdown the top 20 prospects in an organization, and determine how many successful NHL players at different levels a team can expect to pull from that pipeline.
This is not meant to be a crystal ball or an actual prognostication of the future of your franchise, this is merely done to determine what a “reasonable” expectation could be in terms of how much talent a teams pipeline could produce.
Since we’ll be doing this for a number of articles, here’s a brief breakdown of our methodology:Skip To Article
1. First we pull the cohorts of all players in the prospect pipeline for which we have data. (+/- 2″ in height, cumulative NHLE production for all years available, players drafted between 2011-2015)
2.We then break down the percentage chance each player has to be an NHL player, and at what level (Elite, 1st line, 2nd line, 3rd line, 4th line, Elite D, 1st pair, 2nd pair, third pair, depth,).
3. Once all players are loaded, we sum the total percentages for each level of success.
4. Starting at the highest level (Elite) we determine whether or not the total sum of probability reaches a designated threshold (100% for Safe, 75% for Possible, 50% for Best Case Scenario). If the threshold is met, that means we will assume one of the players on this list will “make it” and become a player within that that bracket.
5. To determine which player “made it” we select the player with highest probability of success at that specific level.
6. We record that player, tally what quality of player he is, and remove him from the list and data set.
7. We repeat the process again (now minus the percentages of the player who has “made it”) until no fields break the designated threshold.
The purpose of this exercise is to determine how many players a team can expect to succeed, without accidentally including a player’s chances for success more than once (hence why we select a player to represent each success and remove them from the data pool).
While there are obvious limitations (such as assuming the most likely player to succeed always will) this should provide a decent handle on what your pipeline may produce.
But enough with the boring stuff, on to the numbers!
The chart above shows the number of success’s possible within the Jet’s pipeline at various thresholds.
As you can see, the Jets can “safely” assume 6 players will graduate from the current crop (2 1st line forwards, 1 second line forward, 2 third line forwards, and 1 first pairing dman), there’s a reasonable possibility of graduating 9 players, and if everything worked out perfectly they could potentially pull 12 skaters.
While these numbers are obviously rudimentary, the “safe” projection is probably the most accurate. While pulling 9 skaters from 4 drafts (Mark Scheifele, Adam Lowry, Jacob Trouba, and the 6 listed here) is extremely favorable, it is not completely unheard of.
For Example: From the 03-04-05-06 Drafts, the Chicago Blackhawks generated 8 successful NHL players.
We’ll go into more detail on each of the projections and the players listed below.
| # | Type of Player | Players Selected |
| 2 | First Line Forward | Nik Ehlers |
| Kyle Connor | ||
| 1 | First Pair Defender | Josh Morrissey |
| 1 | Second Line Forward | Nic Petan |
| 2 | Third Line Forward | Jansen Harkins |
| Joel Armia |
As mentioned, the safe projection is the most likely outcome of these possibilities.
Nik Ehlers, and Kyle Connor represent the most likely players to become true impact skaters at the NHL level, while Josh Morrissey holds a reasonable level of potential to become a top point producing defender.
The diminutive Nic Petan has the best chance of becoming a second line forward for the big club with a shot at being a top line player (as we’ll see later).
Recent 2nd round pick Jansen Harkins and the Finnish Joel Armia (part of the Evander Kane trade) round out the most likely players to achieve success, becoming third line contributors.
For a “safe” projection the Jets definitely still have a lot in the pipeline, and this is not including already graduated Mark Scheifele, Jacob Trouba, Adam Lowry, and highly touted goaltender Connor Hellebuyck.
If these projections are correct, the Jets could “reasonably” expect to have found 10 quality NHL players (9 w/o Joel Armia) in 4 drafts- a sure sign that the oft-preached “draft and develop” game plan may be on track and ahead of schedule.
| # | Type of Player | Players Selected |
| 1 | Elite Forward | Nic Ehlers |
| 2 | First Line Forward | Kyle Connor |
| Nic Petan | ||
| 1 | First Pair Defender | Josh Morrissey |
| 2 | Second Line Forward | Chase De Leo |
| Jack roslovic | ||
| 1 | Second Pair Defender | Tucker Poolman |
| 2 | Third Line Forward | Jansen Harkins |
| Joel Armia |
Reducing the threshold for success to 75% probability grows the Jet’s pipeline by an additional 3 skaters and sees some players achieve higher levels of success.
With this threshold in play, we can see that Nik Ehlers has a very strong chance to become an elite level player, while Nic Petan is definitely capable of reaching his ceiling as a first line player.
Additionally, we see recent 1st round pick Jack Roslovic and the undersized Chase De leo have reasonable chances of becoming second line contributors.
A sleeper pick unknown to most outside of Winnipeg, UND’s Tucker Poolman shows that he could also pan out as a potential second pairing offensive defender.
| # | Type of Player | Players Selected |
| 2 | Elite Forward | Nik Ehlers |
| Kyle Connor | ||
| 4 | First Line Forward | Nic Petan |
| Jack Roslovic | ||
| Jansen Harkins | ||
| Scott Kosmachuk | ||
| 1 | First Pairing Defender | Josh Morrissey |
| 1 | Second Line Forward | Chase De Leo |
| 2 | Second Pairing Defender | Tucker Poolman |
| Jack Glover | ||
| 2 | Third Line Forward | Joel Armia |
| Erik Foley |
Reducing the threshold of success down to 50% or better creates what we would call a blindly optimistic view of the future of the Jet’s franchise.
That being said, this could be used to help determine the ceiling of many of these players, or at least provide us with an expanded list of who may be the ones to fill the respective roles identified in safer projections.
We see a number of lower ranked forwards jump into the First Line catagory (a testament to the forward depth the Jets have amassed), as well as the inclusions of Jack Glover on the defenders list and Erik Foley to the third line.
While no team would ever be fortunate enough to produce an astounding 16 players over four drafts (Why? this is approximately 4 per draft. Currently 2 player per draft is above average) the fact that the Jets have acquired this many prospects with exceptional ceilings is worth noting.
Again, we would put little stock in projecting the Jets to successfully graduate all of these players.
On the other hand, the margins of difference between these players is often very small. Thus increasing the list of names gives us a better chance of recognizing a future player, one that may likely succeed over those ranked as “safer”.
Conclusions
The Jets have a very, VERY, deep prospect pool.
While we won’t know where they stand relative to the rest of league until we’ve completed our comparisons, it’s hard to believe that many teams will be able to match the depth and quality of players the Jets have acquired.
Still, it’s important to remember that even our “safe” projections would put the Jets at a near record-setting pace for drafting and development. Few teams have successfully graduated 8 or more prospects in 4-5 year span, and none have done so continuously.
While this exercise is meant to show a “reasonable” projection of the future it is by no means set in stone nor a scientific certainty.
Probability states that the Jets will likely end up with numbers similar to our Safe projection, but it’s important to note that our system does not account for the outliers, and that some data is missing.
For example, Scott Kosmachuk has had a significant down year, and it is a near certainty he never becomes a first line winger, but due to the depth of the Jets pool, and Kosmachuk having the highest 1st line probability of the remaining wingers, the system selected him.
On the other hand, there’s no mention of forward Andrew Copp or JC Lipon, two prospects whom many expect to see on the club as soon as this fall in bottom six roles.
Again, a study like this should not be taken as gospel, but should be used to adjust expectations when discussing the future of the Jets franchise, and the players they have in the pipeline.
It will be interesting to track the success of these pipelines going forward to compare against these study’s in the future.