The Winnipeg Jets have been in win-now mode for the past number of seasons and as a result have traded away quite a few high-round draft picks for NHL-ready players. However, general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff has still selected a number of players over the past few drafts the organization hopes will blossom into impactful big-leaguers within a few seasons (or sooner).
Here, we’ll take a look at the Top 10 Prospects in the Jets’ system for 2025-26.
The exact definition of a prospect varies from person to person and publication to publication, but here’s the criteria for this article:
- The player must be 23 years old or younger
- The player must have played fewer than 100 NHL games
- The player must be either signed to an NHL contract or selected in an NHL Entry Draft. Players signed to American Hockey League (AHL) contracts don’t count.
10: Domenic DiVincentiis
- Position: Goaltender
- Drafted: 207th Overall (7th Round) 2022 NHL Entry Draft
- Catches: Left
- Height/weight: 6-foot-2, 194 pounds
The now 21-year-old goaltender raised his stock with a strong rookie pro season in 2024-25. The Ontarian started the campaign in the AHL with the Manitoba Moose, was sent down to the ECHL’s Norfolk Admirals when Kaapo Kahkonen was re-acquired off waivers from the Colorado Avalanche, then was called up again in late January due to Thomas Milic’s struggles. The former North Bay Battalion standout became the Moose’s primary goalie from February onward and put up the best numbers of any of the four netminders to tend the team’s crease.
In the AHL, DiVincentiis posted a 13-12-2-2 record, 2.84 goals against average (GAA) and .906 Save Percentage (SV%). He captured his first professional shutout in the Moose’s final game of the season on April 19 in a 1-0 win over the Texas Stars. In the ECHL, he had a 15-5-0 record, 2.97 GAA, and .896 SV% in 20 starts. In the ECHL Kelly Cup Playoffs, he had a 1-1 record with a 3.00 GAA.
While not the biggest goaltender out there at 6-foot-2 and 194 pounds, DiVincentiis is an athletic and agile goalie who is already technically sound. He should continue to get the bulk of the work for the Moose in 2025-26 and if his progression continues, he could become a viable NHL goaltender in just a few seasons. If that happens, he will be a massive steal of a seventh-round pick.
9: Sascha Boumedienne
- Position: Defence
- Drafted: 28th overall (1st Round) 2025 NHL Entry Draft
- Shoots: Left
- Height/weight: 6-foot-2, 175 pounds
The Jets’ defensive prospect pool was shallow heading into the 2025 Draft earlier this year, with Elias Salomonsson considered only young blue liner with top-four NHL potential. However, Cheveldayoff deepened that pool by by selecting Sascha Boumedienne 28th overall.
Boumedienne recorded 13 points (three goals, 10 assists) in 40 games for the Boston University (BU) Terriers last season. The 6-foot-2 left shooter, born in Finland but a Swedish national, made jump to the NCAA team after spending 2023-24 with the United States Hockey League’s (USHL) Youngstown Phantoms, where he recorded 27 points (three goals, 24 assists) in 49 games. There wasn’t a ton of pressure on him at BU considering Tom Willander and Cole Hutson also patrolled their blue line, but he improved as the season went on.
“Boumedienne is touted as an offensive defenseman who projects as a top power-play option in the very near future,” THW’s William Espy writes in a prospect profile.
Boumedienne represented Sweden at the 2025 U18 World Junior Championships (WJC) and broke the single-tournament scoring record for a defenseman by racking up 14 points in six games en route to being named the tournament’s best defenseman. His eye-popping six-point performance against Switzerland showcases his heady skillset that could be perfect for a team like the Jets, who stress the importance of getting offensive production from the back end.
“You just watch his progression over the course of the year. His best plays were in the toughest moments. He played big minutes down the stretch in all situations,” Cheveldayoff said on Zoom from Winnipeg after the first round of the draft ended. “Yeah, certainly that (his skating) is an attribute that jumps out at you. He transports the puck, he can beat pressure with his skating. Good two-way game. Comes from a family that obviously has been in the game, so he’s been around it his whole life. It’s an exciting time for us to be able to add that kind of quality of a player picking at 28.”
“I describe myself as a two-way defenseman who plays really hard all over the ice and uses his skating to my advantage,” Boumedienne said. “I like to join the rush and create offense and kind of make quick plays and a quick shot and kind of create offence from there. So, a defenceman who will play hard all over the ice and kind of do a little bit of everything.”
Boumedienne will return to BU for 2025-26 and should have a bigger role in his sophomore campaign.
8: Jacob Julien
- Position: Centre
- Drafted: 146th Overall (5th Round) 2023 NHL Entry Draft
- Shoots: Left
- Height/weight: 6-foot-4, 190 pounds
Julien came out of seemingly nowhere in 2023-24 after recording just 16 points in 40 games for the London Knights in 2022-23. After being drafted in the middle of the fifth round, he looked like an entirely different player and notched an impressive 29 goals and 49 assists for 78 points in 67 games.
He was not as productive last season, putting up 11 goals and 43 assists for 54 points in 65 games, a 24-point drop. However, he did play a key role in helping the Knights win their second-consecutive Ontario Hockey League (OHL) championship by recording six goals and 13 assists for 19 points in 17 playoff games.
Despite his lack of draft pedigree and statistical downturn last season, he is considered an intelligent centre who can contribute on a team’s power play and penalty kill.
Julien signed a three-year entry-level deal (ELC) with the Jets in March, and having turned 20 last September, has aged out of juniors. He will start 2025-26 either in the AHL with the Moose or the ECHL with the Admirals.
7: Kevin He
- Position: Left wing
- Drafted: 109th Overall (4th Round) 2024 NHL Entry Draft
- Shoots: Left
- Height/weight: 6-feet, 180 pounds
Cheveldayoff described He a “very serious individual” and “articulate type of person” last fall. While He fell to the fourth round partially due to his lack of size, he is an intelligent player with a ton of positive attributes, the most notable being his wheels.
“He has blazing speed through the neutral zone and always leads the charge into the offensive zone when he is on the ice,” THW’s Lukas Bernasiewicz writes in a prospect profile. “His ability to keep the puck on his stick at high speeds is one of the best among his peers. With his speed, He can find open space for his teammates to find him in transition, or when he drives hard to the net, he is often open for a tap-in because the defender can’t catch up with him.”
He got off to a scorching start last season, his third with the OHL’s Niagara IceDogs, amassing 18 points in his first seven games. The now 19-year-old cooled off a little bit from there, but still finished with an impressive 36 goals and 39 assists for 75 points to finish second in team scoring. He also recorded three goals and two assists for five points in five playoff games.
He signed a three year ELC with the Jets in December, becoming the first-even Chinese-born player to sign an NHL deal (he was born in Beijing and moved to Montreal when he was six years old.) He doesn’t turn 20 until next April so he cannot play in the AHL this season — the NHL/CHL Transfer Agreement does not allow anyone to leave the OHL, Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League, or Western Hockey League (WHL) to play minor-league hockey unless they turn 20 by Dec. 31 of that season or have played four seasons in juniors — so he will return to the IceDogs for his fourth and final season there.
“If it can turn out to be a great story, that’s secondary,” Cheveldayoff said last fall. “It is always nice to see the diversity in the game and help maybe grow the game more. It would be a great story if he can continue to make that next step.”
6: Kieron Walton
- Position: Centre
- Drafted: 187th Overall (6th Round) 2024 NHL Entry Draft
- Shoots: Left
- Height/weight: 6-foot-6, 216 pounds
Walton is noted to have good vision, an ability to stickhandle in tight areas, and to be a good puck protector who uses his size to his advantage. The towering centre could develop into a top-six playmaking power forward in the vein of Tom Wilson or Jamie Benn and also has the potential to be a great net-front power-play option down the line.
The Ontarian absolutely lit it up last season for the Sudbury Wolves despite being selected near the end of the 2024 Draft, racking up 38 goals and 54 assists for 92 points in 66 games to finish first on the Wolves in scoring, ninth in the OHL last season, and snag a Red Tilson Trophy nomination. It represented a huge uptick in production from 2023-24, when he had 43 points in 65 games.
He signed a three-year ELC with the Jets on April 7 and joined the Moose on an amateur tryout agreement, playing in four games and recording his first professional point, an assist, in the Moose’s final game of the season.
Walton doesn’t turn 20 until next April, so like Kevin He, is not eligible to play in the AHL this season. Walton instead will return to Sudbury for his fourth and final season.
5: Colby Barlow
- Position: Left wing
- Drafted: 18th Overall (1st Round) 2023
- Shoots: Left
- Height/weight: 6-foot-1, 190 pounds
Barlow, who turned 20 in February, was done a bit of a disservice by the NHL/CHL agreement as playing in the AHL probably would have been better for his development than spending a fourth season in juniors.
He got off to a slow start last season with the Oshawa Generals, who acquired him from the North Bay Battalion in an early-October blockbuster, and was left off Canada’s 2025 WJC selection roster as a result of his disappointing play.
However, he really picked it up in the new year to end his OHL career on a positive note. Overall, he scored 32 goals and added 29 assists for 61 points in 62 games to finish fourth in team scoring.
He continued his strong play in the postseason and helped power the Generals to the championship series by racking up 14 goals and 19 assists for 33 points in 21 games. Unfortunately for him, the Generals fell in five games to the Knights.
“I think it’s good to go through stuff like that sometimes. You learn about yourself, you learn about adversity. You become better when you go through stuff like that,” Barlow said.
“It was such a great group of guys in Oshawa. It was a long playoff run, it was fun. We came up short in the finals which was disappointing but to get that experience, to get that kind of exposure was awesome.” (From ‘Patience, perseverance pay off,’ Winnipeg Free Press, July 1, 2025.)
Even though he never managed to recreate his 46 goal, 79-point 2022-23 that played a big role in the Jets drafting him as high as they did — and even though his stock may have fallen in some’s eyes -— the organization is still excited to welcome Barlow’s wicked shot, maturity, and leadership skills he built by captaining the Attack for two seasons into the fold full time.
Barlow signed his three-year ELC in September, 2023, which has slid twice. He has aged out of juniors and will start 2025-26 with the Moose, who he played three games for in 2023-24 on an amateur tryout agreement.
4: Nikita Chibrikov
- Position: Right wing
- Drafted: 55th Overall (2nd Round) 2021 NHL Entry Draft
- Shoots: Left
- Height/weight: 5-foot-10, 170 pounds
Chibrikov was coming along nicely in his sophomore season through mid-January, with 18 points in 30 games for the Moose and three points in four games for the Jets during an impressive December callup.
However, the now 22-year-old Russian product had his season cut short due to an ankle injury. In a Jan. 19 home game against the Toronto Marlies, his leg buckled while attempting to check Mikko Kokkonen near the end boards and the damage required surgery to repair.
Chibrikov — a feisty, high-motor guy who never shies away from a battle and possesses a great shot — should push for a full-time NHL spot this season in the middle six with Mason Appleton and Nikolaj Ehlers’ departures in free agency. Considering he had 47 points in 70 games with the Moose in his rookie 2023-24 and showed strongly there last season prior to the injury in a top-six role, the 2021 second rounder likely won’t benefit much from another season in the AHL. If he doesn’t make the opening-night roster, he will likely be the first callup.
3: Elias Salomonsson
- Position: Defence
- Drafted: 55th Overall (2nd Round) 2022 NHL Entry Draft
- Shoots: Right
- Height/weight: 6-foot-2, 189 pounds
The smooth-skating, offensive-minded Swedish defenseman is the highest-profile blue liner in the prospect pipeline and the only one other than Boumedienne who seems to have top-four NHL potential.
The Skelleftea-born product recorded five goals and 22 assists for 27 points points in 53 games in his rookie pro season and was named a 2025 AHL All-Star. He also won two team awards: the Best Defenseman Award and Rookie of the Year Award.
The right-hander played in all situations and finished second among Moose blue liners in points despite missing nearly two months from early December to late January with an upper-body injury. He is someone the Jets hope will quarterback one of their power-play units in the future.
Due to a crowded blue line featuring a bunch of veterans, it’s unlikely Salomonsson will make the Jets this season; it’ll be much better for him to keep logging big minutes in the AHL than sitting in the press box watching the Jets. However, it wouldn’t be a surprise if he plays his first-career NHL game sometime during the season.
2: Brad Lambert
- Position: Centre
- Drafted: 30th Overall (1st Round) 2022 NHL Entry Draft
- Shoots: Right
- Height/weight: 6-foot-1, 173 pounds
Lambert’s goal total with the Moose dropped to seven last season from the 21 he potted as a rookie in 2023-24, and his point total fell to 35 from 55. He said he was “not too happy with it” (his season) but part of the reason for his downturn in production was that he didn’t have consistent or high-quality linemates on a transient, thin Moose team that finished last in the Central Division.
The organization still has high hopes Lambert can be an impactful NHL centre or winger potentially as early as this season. The Finn, who at 21 has also played six-career games for the Jets and tallied two assists, has logged a lot of top-six and power-play time in the AHL over the past two seasons and with Ehlers’ departure to the Carolina Hurricanes, it appears the door is open to him for the speedy Lambert to snag a full-time NHL gig in 2025-26.
“Hopefully a guy like Brad Lambert can give us that opportunity to use his speed,” Cheveldayoff said recently. “For us, skating is paramount, but it’s also (about) playing fast. That’s what a coach tries to do within their systems. It’s not necessarily about the individual speed of a player, it’s how the player plays that a team plays fast.” (From ‘Looking ahead to training camp,’ Winnipeg Free Press, July 10, 2025.)
Lambert is, first and foremost, a dynamic skater with great acceleration and a ton of offensive creativity. While he is not always the best decision maker and sometimes tries to do it all himself with the puck on his stick even when a pass is a better option, he has improved on his consistency with the Moose, evidenced by his 90 points in 125 games over the past two seasons. A lack of consistency was a knock on him in the past and was one of the reasons he fell to 30th overall in 2022.
As young as he still is, Lambert will be an NHL work in progress, but should begin to make a mark there.
1: Brayden Yager
- Position: Centre
- Drafted: 14th Overall (1st Round by the Pittsburgh Penguins) 2023 NHL Entry Draft
- Shoots: Right
- Height/weight: 6-feet, 170 pounds
Yager, who the Jets acquired last summer from the Penguins for disgruntled 2022 first-rounder Rutger McGroarty, was undeniably one of the WHL’s premier players last season and has true NHL star potential. After being traded to the Lethbridge Hurricanes by the Moose Jaw Warriors in early December, the centre recorded 52 points (14 goals, 38 assists) in just 33 games.
He was serving as Warriors captain at the time of the trade and had 11 goals and 19 assists for 30 points in 21 games with them before being dealt. After finishing with a cool 82 points between the clubs in 54 games, he added eight goals and six assists for 14 points in 16 playoff games, but the Hurricanes were swept in the third round by the Medicine Hat Tigers. He also repeated as the CHL’s Sportsmanlike Player of the Year.
Yager also captained Canada’s squad at the 2025 WJC and recorded three assists in five games. Unfortunately, Canada had another disappointing showing and was ousted in the quarterfinal by Czechia for the second-straight tournament.
“The thing that jumps out at you about Yager’s game is his shot and his willingness to use it,” THW’s Devin Little wrote in a prospect profile. “He’s got a quick release and hits his target with deadly accuracy… his shot does not rival the best goal-scorers in the world, but it is dangerous enough that he could develop into a 30 goal-scorer in the NHL at his peak.”
While noting his playmaking game is simple, Little added “he knows how to identify the simple plays that maintain possession and lead to scoring opportunities. In other words, he’s more of a finisher than a facilitator, but he is more than capable of being the ‘tic’ or ‘tac’ in a tic-tac-toe play.”
At 20, he has aged out of juniors and will start 2025-26 with the Moose. While a natural centre, there’s a good chance he could be deployed on the wing early in his professional career as wing carries less responsibility than centre.
*Off the list from last season’s Top 10 rankings: Ville Heinola (aged out), Thomas Milic (poor performance), Chaz Lucius (retirement), Dmitry Rashevsky (aged out, re-signed in Russia.)
