Jets general manager (GM) Kevin Cheveldayoff and head coach Scott Arniel met with the media Wednesday for their end-of-season press conference days after their team fell in the second round to the Dallas Stars.
Here’s what they said over nearly an hour on the playoff run, historic 2024-25 season, the next steps, the Nikolaj Ehlers situation, and much more.
“There’s Still Work and Steps to Be Done” — Cheveldayoff
The Jets dominated for much of the season, winning 56 games and capturing the franchise’s first Presidents’ Trophy. They managed to get past the first round in the playoffs for the first time since 2021 and has some great moments — most notably, the Game 7 comeback for the ages against the St. Louis Blues in the first round — but didn’t play up to their full potential or follow their blueprint for success often enough. A combination of shaky goaltending, poor special teams, lack of bottom-six production, and inability to win on the road led to their relatively-early ouster.
A long offseason of introspection and analysis is to come for both men as they try to figure out how to go deeper next postseason. “To a man, everybody certainly was looking for more and it’s incumbent on us to continue to try to take the next steps,” Cheveldayoff said.
Arniel said “there’s a lot of work to be done” and that he and his staff are going to begin the process of exit interviews and hope to have “in-depth conversations” with every player within two weeks. He promised to do his homework to determine exactly what the message needs to be going forward and what areas of improvement to focus on.
“We Haven’t Achieved What We’re All Trying to Achieve, And That’s to Win a Stanley Cup” — Arniel
Arniel and Cheveldayoff repeatedly said they were proud of their group for their regular-season accomplishments, but were also clear in their disappointment in not going further on hockey’s biggest stage.
“The playoffs are a life of their own,” the long-time GM said. “You have to earn your right to get to the playoffs. Then you have to earn your right to get through the different rounds. We talked about it a lot, and (Arniel) coined the phrase quite a bit: it’s about the moments when you come into the playoffs. Every single moment matters… in talking to the guys, those common themes are just understanding how important each and every detail is from game to game.”
“We want to get to that point where you have the battle scars, you have the knowledge, you know what to expect and what it’s going to take to go beyond that next level,” he continued.
He said the Jets came into the season improved after their disappointing 2024 first-round exit, but “there’s got to be more” going forward. He described the group he assembled, which combines drafted-and-developed veterans and younger players with potential to grow, as one that still pushing.
“The playoffs are a different animal,” Arniel echoed. “To me, it’s the moments that Chevy just mentioned… all it is about is winning your series, it’s winning those games, however that comes about… that Game 6 for us in Dallas, that was a game to be won. We were one shot away from accomplishing that, and that’s all that mattered. All we cared about was getting home for Game 7.”
Arniel promised that he and his staff will go over everything at their disposal to make sure they rise to the moment next time.
“I think our group has learned a lesson, both the positive and the negative side of things, what it takes at this time of year…” he said. “There’s some things again that we’re going to have to grill our group on and get better at so that we hit this again next year so we’re better prepared for the outcome to fall in our favour.”
Related: Jets’ End-of-Season Interviews Reflect on 2nd-Round Playoff Exit & Lessons Learned
“We did a lot of great things this year, no one’s really satisfied with what we’ve done, at the end of the day we did some things we can be very proud of,” Arniel said. “We haven’t achieved what we’re all trying to achieve, and that’s to win a Stanley Cup. If you’re not in this game to do that, I’m not really sure why you’re playing.”
“For me, this is the start of something I’m hoping ends with us, one day, holding that Stanley Cup,” he said later. “Like I said earlier, that’s why were here and that’s what this group wants… maybe a month from now we’ll sit back and look at it and talk about the great things that happened, but at the end of the day, we didn’t win. We’re not playing Edmonton tonight (in Game 1 of the Western Conference Final.) That’s the one thing that still is sort of gnawing at me a bit.”
Cheveldayoff Ready to Make Pitch to Ehlers; Wants Him As a “Jet For Life”
The Jets’ highest-profile unrestricted free agent, Nikolaj Ehlers, will be priority number one over the next few weeks. The dynamic Dane, in the final year of a seven-year deal, recorded 63 points (24 goals and 39 assists) in 69 games. The ninth-overall 2014 pick, who has spent his entire 10-season career with the Jets, will be highly sought after if he hits the open market July 1.
Cheveldayoff and Ehlers haven’t sat down together yet as Ehlers went right to Sweden for the 2025 IIHF World Championship after the Jets were eliminated, but Cheveldayoff and Ehlers’ agent met for two hours recently. Cheveldayoff described Ehlers as a player “we think the world of.”
“We’ll put our best foot forward with him to try to make our case to be one of those guys who can be a unique Jet-for-life-type player,” Cheveldayoff said, describing their relationship as great. “If he does choose to go in a different direction, then obviously as an organization we’ll have to evolve… and it’ll be another opportunity for us to grow in another area.”
Cheveldayoff Addresses Unused Money at Trade Deadline
Cheveldayoff acquired Luke Schenn and Brandon Tanev as depth pieces at the 2025 Trade Deadline, but did not spend $6 million in available cap space. A number of other teams made much bigger splashes (such as the Stars, who acquired Mikko Rantanen and Mikael Granlund, two players who were key in dispatching the Jets). The strategy of only tinkering and avoiding potentially disrupting the core’s chemistry made sense at the time, but the Jets appeared a thin in the playoffs when Ehlers, Josh Morrissey, Mark Scheifele, and Gabriel Vilardi all missed time with injury.
Cheveldayoff said every trade deadline presents different opportunities and they had a multi-layered plan in place heading into it, but added “you don’t just go grab a player just to shoehorn something in.”
“You don’t just spend it (the cap space) for the sake of spending it. If there’s not something that fits, then that’s just the reality of the situation,” he added of not adding a higher-profile player such as Brock Nelson or Scott Laughton.
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The number of teams still alive in the playoff race at the deadline also played a factor in it being a sellers’ market and there being multiple suitors for each high-quality player, Arniel added.
Arniel highlighted that the Jets needed more depth production against the Stars and said playoff scoring isn’t the sole responsibility of top players, whether they’re long-tenured guys or deadline additions.
Cheveldayoff Puts Faith in Core, Praises Arniel
The Jets are clearly tight knit and the team culture has improved a ton under captain Adam Lowry, former head coach Rick Bowness, and now Arniel, who is nominated for the Jack Adams Award. Despite them not having made deep runs in the past three postseasons and not advancing to the Western Conference Final since 2018, Cheveldayoff has faith in the core.
“I feel very comfortable sitting here saying that that group of players wants it, they want to push. They want to be pushed,” he said, crediting Arniel and his staff credit for getting them to come together, buy in, and execute their game plan.
“He’s being recognized for getting this group to care about each other, play for each other, play a system… when we’d waver, you’d see the foundation that gets put in place at training camp by the coaching staff and players that have bought into that. That’s what it’s all about,” Cheveldayoff continued. “I truly believe that we’ve got a bunch of winners in that room for how they played that scorecard on a nightly basis over the course of 100-and-some games, including preseason.”
“These guys held each other to a standard, and that standard wasn’t going to be lost,” he concluded. “That group of guys, they set their standard and they were true to their word.”