When Scott Arniel took over as coach of the Winnipeg Jets last summer after Rick Bowness retired from a nearly four-decade career behind NHL benches, players had a request.
“We asked him to be pushed like an elite team and coached like an elite team,” top defenseman Josh Morrissey said.
Mission accomplished so far.
The Jets have won seven in a row to move atop the NHL standings through 55 games going into Thursday’s action around the league, and it’s not just because of elite goaltender Connor Hellebuyck. They’re the highest-scoring team with the best power play and have given up the fewest goals a game, playing with strong fundamentals and sound structure.
“We’re not one-dimensional,” Arniel said last weekend in Washington. “We have a team that our defending, we defend as well as we did last year. We don’t give teams a lot of room to work. We have firepower. We have our power play that’s No. 1, but our 5-on-5 offense has been a big part of it. We’ve won games in many different ways.”
Winnipeg has two of the top five goal-scorers: Mark Scheifele has 31 and Kyle Connor 30. Morrissey has the fourth-most points among players at his position and should again be in the discussion for the Norris Trophy.
And, of course, there’s Hellebuyck, who at 33-7-2 is on pace to break the single-season wins record of 48 shared by Braden Holtby and Hall of Famer Martin Brodeur and leads all netminders with a 2.04 goals-against average and a .925 save percentage.
“Having a guy like that back there, he makes the game look so easy,” Arniel said. “I get to watch him in practice, watch him in games. He’s a student of the game. He loves to kind of watch what’s going on around him, and he has such a great anticipation of what’s coming at him.”
A big part of that stems from the expertise of Arniel, who was an an associate coach on Bowness’ staff the previous two seasons. This is his second stint as an NHL head coach after a season and a half running the Columbus Blue Jackets from 2010-12, and he has displayed a steady hand at the wheel of a veteran team in win-now mode.
“He’s a very demanding coach and puts us all on the same page,” said winger Vladislav Namestnikov, who has eight points during this seven-game winning streak. “Every game we go out there and play for each other, and he kind of bonds the team together.”
No disrespect to Bowness, whose contagious passion and fiery persona helped Dallas reach the Stanley Cup Final in the 2020 bubble, but Arniel has represented a shift in tone for a team that has developed a reputation for strong regular seasons and early playoff exits.
“His composure on the bench has been something that we’ve responded well to,” Morrissey said. “Obviously we were comfortable with him from the last couple years, felt he had a good rapport with us and both sides knew one another pretty well.”
That familiarity does not always work out. While plenty of midseason coaching changes have led to a championship, a team has not won the Cup with an assistant elevated to the top job since Edmonton in 1987.
But Arniel has picked his spots when to challenge players, like after back-to-back defeats to Calgary and Utah in January, and they responded. Winnipeg has not lost since.
“That’s the standard he’s held us to, and we’ve as a team held ourselves to that standard, as well,” Morrissey said. “All in all, we’re here every day trying to be the best team we can be and be the best players individually we can be, and he’s been pushing us that direction. I think that’s a huge reason why we’ve had a great year so far.”
So far is the key because the Jets have not made the Cup final in franchise history, which includes a dreadful decade-plus in Atlanta before an ownership change and move to Winnipeg in 2011. They last got past the second round in 2018 when they lost to expansion Vegas in the Western Conference final.
Nothing in fall or winter can guarantee success in the spring, given the brutality of playoff hockey and best-of-seven series that hinge on matchups, and injuries. But Arniel is gearing up the Jets now to be poised for a long run when it matters most.
“You have to build towards a style of hockey that builds, that it’s going to win at playoff time. That’s what we’re trying to do now,” Arniel said. “But it’s also having a competitive mindset that knows when that playoff comes, it’s not just turning something on. It’s being able to do it over the course of the 82 games so that when you go into those playoffs, you’re confident that you’re going to win hockey games because of how you’re playing.”
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