The Winnipeg Jets, as a team in win-now mode and off to an excellent 8-1-0 start, should be dressing their best lineup every game. That best lineup does not include Logan Stanley on the blue line.
Stanley Struggled Mightily in Loss to Maple Leafs
Stanley, against the Toronto Maple Leafs in what was his fifth game in a row on the third pairing with Colin Miller, had by far his worst performance of the season. The defender took a pair of careless and needless first-period penalties, first closing his hand on the puck — really, catching it like a baseball player — in the neutral zone when he could have batted the biscuit down with a closed fist or simply let it fall to the ice, and later interfering with Pontus Holmberg on what was a pedestrian-looking Leafs’ zone entry.
The Jets managed to kill off both penalties, but the second infraction came right after the Maple Leafs opened the scoring and the continued momentum the second power-play gave the visitors led to them potting three further goals to open up a big 4-0 lead by the early second. It was a hole too deep for the Jets as they attempted to come back but eventually fell 6-4 for their first loss of the season.
Stanley, whose lack of foot speed the Maple Leafs exploited throughout the evening, was far from the only guy playing subpar defence — the Neal Pionk/Dylan Samberg pairing also had a terrible time — but his overall play should send him back to the press box.
Stanley has skated a career-high 16:28 per game this season, but doesn’t appear prepared for the increased minutes new head coach Scott Arniel is giving the third pairing, especially since he re-entered the lineup coming off preseason surgery to repair a meniscus issue. He has one assist and the second-worst even-strength CORSI For and Fenwick For possession percentages among Jets defenseman at 48.0 and 48.1, respectively.
Hadyn Fleury, Dylan Coghlan Better Potential Options
Offseason acquisition Haydn Fleury played the first four games alongside Miller as Stanley recovered and looked comfortable. Fleury, who is two years older than Stanley and averaged 15:03 before being yanked when Arniel wanted to work Stanley into a game at home, did not record any points but put up nice even-strength CORSI and Fenwick percentages at 56.2 and 54.3, respectively. The journeyman veteran of 272 NHL games to Stanley’s 144 also had two hits and blocked six shots.
Dylan Coghlan, another offseason acquisition, has yet to make his Jets’ debut and has sat for nine-straight contests. The 26 year old, who has played 106-career NHL games, only got into one game with the Carolina Hurricanes last season but put up 41 points (16 goals, 25 assists) in 61 games for the American Hockey League’s Springfield Thunderbirds, indicating his potential to inject the bottom pairing with some added offensive flair.
Jets Have Extended Stanley Illogical Level of Loyalty
The Jets’ organization has, for years, extended Stanley a level of loyalty that defies logic. No head coach — from Paul Maurice, to Dave Lowry, to Rick Bowness, to now Arniel — has been immune from dressing him over better options.
General manager Kevin Cheveldayoff waived Johnathan Kovacevic and Declan Chisholm in past seasons, losing both for nothing, to avoid exposing Stanley to waivers. Kovacevic and Chisholm are now both bona fide NHL defenders for the New Jersey Devils and Minnesota Wild, respectively, with Kovacevic playing on the Devils’ second pairing and Chisholm getting power-play time.
Related: Jets Make Mistake By Waiving Chisholm Over Stanley
The justifications for playing Stanley — and for signing him to a two-year extension this past offseason — continue to be that either he is physical or that he’s willing to drop the gloves. However, he isn’t overly physical given his 6-foot-7, 230-pound frame, with only five hits this season and he has zero fights (no one on the Jets has dropped the gloves as fighting’s prominence continues to decline.)
The organization’s continued attempts to shoehorn Stanley into the lineup despite the now-26-year-old not having any sustained success in his career seems to be a combination of them succumbing to the “sunk-cost fallacy” and to a “big-guy” bias. Cheveldayoff and company cannot seem to admit they made a massive reach selecting him in the first round in 2016 and seem to still believe that being large and “rugged” are an important parts of being an effective defenseman when really the most important skills modern NHL defenseman needs to success are good speed and puck-moving ability. Zdeno Chara was the exception when it came to huge defensemen, not the rule.
NHL d-men tend to reach their peak effectiveness in their age-27 season and decline thereafter, so Stanley will not become more than he is right now. It’s high time for the organization to realize they don’t have to keep investing in him and that giving up is a better idea than continuing to do something that doesn’t work. One has to hope that either Fleury or Coghlan will be in the third-pairing spot Wednesday versus the Detroit Red Wings and going forward until Ville Heinola recovers from his second ankle surgery and re-inserts himself into the conversation.