The Winnipeg Jets’ training camp begins in less than two weeks, on Sept. 18, and Cole Perfetti has yet to sign a new contract.
Should Jets fans be concerned about the lack of news surrounding the 22-year-old forward — who seems set to be a bigger part of the team than ever before — and that a potentially-damaging holdout situation is looming as the regular season quickly approaches? Let’s explore.
Perfetti Yet to Sign On Dotted Line After Up and Down 2023-24
Perfetti is the last-remaining restricted free agent (RFA) on the Jets’ books, as general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff signed the rest by the end of July. However, the 2020 10th-overall pick was the highest-profile of the bunch by far, so negotiations were always set to be much more complex.
Perfetti’s 2023-24 was up and down. In the first half, he excelled and his play showed significant leaps forward. Through 41 games, he was a key contributor to the Jets’ surprising dominance: as a fixture on the second-line right wing, he had 29 points (12 goals, 17 assists), just one point shy of his season career high with half the season to go.
However, he fell into an extended scoring drought at about the same time the team started experiencing some second-half struggles. He suffered through a 23-game goal-scoring slump from Jan. 11 to March 23, leading now-retired head coach Rick Bowness to bump Perfetti down to the fourth line and into the press box after the team added Tyler Toffoli to the forward group at the 2024 Trade Deadline.
Overall, he spent 11 games as a healthy scratch, but scored five goals and added two assists for seven points in his final 10 regular-season games to end the campaign on a positive note. He also stayed healthy all season for the first time in his three-season career and set career highs with 19 goals and 38 points.
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A deal has obviously not been simple to reach, because if it were simple, it would have been done long ago. While a modest two-year bridge remains a potential solution to give Perfetti a chance to be more consistent, a long-term deal isn’t out of the realm of possibility if the organization really wants to commit to the youth movement seemingly underway under new head coach Scott Arniel. Cheveldayoff has a history of signing similarly-aged RFAs long term: he locked Mark Scheifele up at 23 for eight years in 2016, Nikolaj Ehlers at 21 for seven years in 2017, and Josh Morrissey at 24 for eight years and Kyle Connor at 21 for seven years in 2019.
These types of deals bear some risk — it’s bad money spent if a player flops from there on out — but in all of the four aforementioned cases, the signees were high draft picks and budding stars not in danger of falling off a cliff. Perfetti is both, even if he doesn’t have quite the same track record Connor, Ehlers, or Scheifele did when they got their deals. Long-term contracts tendered at younger ages tend to be more team-friendly; the risk of offering a bridge is that the player performs exceptionally in the short term and then demands a significant raise over what they would have gotten two years earlier.
There is also recent precedent for players Perfetti’s age getting long-term deals: Winnipegger Seth Jarvis, a fellow 22 year old who has 146 points over his first three campaigns with the Carolina Hurricanes, just cashed in on an eight-year deal worth $7.4 million annually. Perfetti has a modest-by-comparison 75 points in his first three seasons and didn’t break out to the degree Jarvis did last season, so it’s not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, but still interesting as they’re the same age and first round picks from the same draft (Jarvis went three selections after Perfetti.)
Perfetti not having a deal in place before training camp would be a distraction, and contract controversy leaking into the regular season would be an even bigger one.
The Jets have not had an RFA holdout situation since 2016, when Jacob Trouba did so for the first 15 games of the 2016-17 regular season before finally putting pen to paper. The relationship between the team and defenseman never really got back on track after that; Trouba refused to re-sign in 2018-19 as a pending unrestricted free agent, and Cheveldayoff had to trade him in June, 2019 to the New York Rangers to avoid losing him for nothing.
Cheveldayoff needs to do his absolute best to ensure there’s no chance of the relationship between the organization and Perfetti fracturing in a similar way.
Perfetti Set To Be Crucial Part of Jets’ Forward Group This Season
Arniel, in his introductory press conference after being named third head coach in Jets 2.0 history, described youth as “vital.” This indicates players such as Perfetti won’t be bumped down or parked in the press box amid struggles as they may have under Bowness.
The offseason departures of Sean Monahan and Toffoli have left two big holes in the top six. Although Perfetti has not played a lot of centre in his career thus far, is certainly one of the candidates to fill the spot up the middle Monahan vacated. He could also take Toffoli’s winger spot (that would really be a matter of taking his own spot back.)
No Sign of A Rift, But Fans Are Right To Be At Least A Little Concerned
There have been no reports indicating the Jets and Perfetti are beefing about term or dollars, and Arniel told The Winnipeg Sun in August that Perfetti is “excited about the chance we are going to be giving him.” That indicates they’ve been in regular contact.
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Cheveldayoff does not tend to negotiate through the media and remains tight-lipped until there’s concrete news, like last year when he suddenly dropped a Thanksgiving Monday bombshell that Scheifele and Connor Hellebuyck had re-signed to massive seven-year contracts when both seemed as good as gone.
However, rifts don’t exist until they do, so we can’t say for certain everything’s sunshine and rainbows. The Jets have seen recently how quickly things can go sideways with a player — regarding Rutger McGroarty, reports this past spring indicated everything was on track despite him wanting to go back to college for another year instead of turning pro.
However, just a few months later in June, news broke the first-rounder wasn’t interested in signing his entry-level deal with the Jets — he never revealed the reason — and pretty much had to be traded as a result. Cheveldayoff got good value from the Pittsburgh Penguins in centre Brayden Yager — another high-profile first-round draft pick– but one is not exactly in a position of strength when everyone you’re negotiating with knows you’ve got a player who wants out.
So, should fans be nervous that Perfetti still doesn’t have a deal? Perhaps a little, but not too much. Perfetti will be playing for the Jets in 2024-25 as the team has the cap space and also the leverage. The bigger worry is they use that leverage too strongly and alienate someone who is set to be a big part of their present Stanley Cup contention window and their future.
For now, everyone will just have to keep waiting for the two sides to come to terms and hope both sides like the terms they come to.