Unlike Others, Winnipeg Jets Paying Low Price for Savvy Veteran Acquisitions

It wasn’t all that long ago that the trendy thing to do was make fun of Kevin Cheveldayoff’s inability to trade for NHL players, as the Winnipeg Jets general manager went year after year without making a trade for a player of any particular note.

Nobody is mocking Cheveldayoff now.

After making waves with the above blockbuster deal earlier this month, the Jets general manager hasn’t rested on his laurels. Instead, he has quietly worked to improve his team, adding two significant and undervalued rental pieces at virtually no cost to Winnipeg.

We may as well start with the most recent of the Jets’ two trades.

Carl Klingberg, the player going the other way in the deal, is no great loss. The 24-year-old is in his fourth AHL season after clearing waivers at the start of the year. He set a career-high last season with 22 goals and 43 points in 65 games with St. John’s; he’s off even that modest pace this season.

Given his age and production he’s not really a prospect at this point, and players of this type are available for free multiple times per season each and every year.

Jeff Vinnick/Getty Images

That’s what makes it so odd Winnipeg was able to get Lee Stempniak in return. Stempniak’s superficial numbers (18 points in 53 games) are nothing to write home about, but it’s important to take context into account.

For example, Stempniak is 15 points back of young gun Chris Kreider (23), but in terms of points per minute at even strength he actually outscores his more highly touted ex-teammate. He does this despite starting more than his share of shifts in the defensive zone and while outperforming the team average in terms of on-ice shot attempts, something he’s done for years.

Stempniak is versatile, capable of playing either wing and either special team. He’s experienced, closing in on 700 career regular-season games. He (rightly) fetched a third-round draft pick in return at the deadline in 2013-14 despite a low price on rentals, and he’s having a comparable season in a year in which the market is much friendlier to sellers. Yet somehow the Jets were able to get him at virtually no cost.

Winnipeg paid more a few days earlier to land the more highly touted Jiri Tlusty, but it had no cause to complain about the price in that case either.

Tlusty was a pretty logical acquisition for the Jets, a 6’0", 209-pound do-it-all forward with some history with head coach Paul Maurice who brings a little bit of everything to the Winnipeg lineup. Asked in a conference call on Wednesday what Tlusty added to the team, Cheveldayoff launched into a laundry list:

"

Jiri has the ability to play with skill players… He’s got the ability to play on the power play, he can score some goals. There’s a checking side to Jiri as well that Paul knows well, a responsibility side in his game that Paul knows from his time with him. He can play left side or right side; that can be important as time goes on with different injuries and as you get in the stretch run. There’s some familiarity with several players on our team so I think fitting into our locker room is going to be an easy thing for Jiri.

"

Tlusty is no slouch in terms of pure scoring either. He’s been a better points-per-game forward than Chris Stewart and Joel Ward over the last three seasons; it’s pretty hard to imagine either of those guys going for the weak collection of picks that the Carolina Hurricanes managed to get in exchange for Tlusty.  

The Jets haven’t coughed up major assets for marquee players, but given where they are in the standings it’s reasonable to argue that they aren’t in any position to make those moves. What they have done instead is added solid NHL players at thrift-store prices, which is exactly what we would expect from a shrewd bubble team doing its best to make it into the postseason.

Dave Sandford/Getty Images

February 2015 has already been an exciting and expensive time for a lot of NHL teams. For Winnipeg, it has arguably been the general manager’s finest month on the job.

Statistics courtesy of BehindTheNet.ca and NHL.com. 

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.