2 weeks Ago
Nikolaj Ehlers was born in the middle of a playoff run . Now, thanks in part to Saturday’s “freak accident” trip over a linesman, there’s a chance he will never play a starring role in one for Winnipeg. Ehlers is out week to week, per Scott Arniel.
It’s an open-ended timeline, leaving the door open for an eventual return. Will it take one series win? Two? Is there a chance Ehlers takes more than a few weeks to heal? Arniel didn’t say. Advertisement This is the reality of Ehlers’ foot injury, initially suffered against Vegas on April 3 and then aggravated by Saturday’s backward fall over the skate of linesman James Tobias.
The Winnipeg Jets are a deep, contending team that could win often enough to see Ehlers return during these playoffs. They’re aided in that quest by the No. 1 seed they locked up on Saturday night.
They also have positive news on two other injury fronts: Defenceman Dylan Samberg was back at practice on Tuesday. Samberg described the way Connor McDavid’s slapshot struck a nerve that took the feeling out of his right leg, saying, “My leg just went dead, but it was just a precautionary thing to not come back out.” He’s expected to play in Game 1 on Saturday or Sunday, pending the announcement of Winnipeg’s playoff schedule (more on that in a moment).
Gabriel Vilardi was also back on the ice for the first time since his upper-body injury against Buffalo on March 23. Arniel upgraded Vilardi’s status to “day to day”; his Game 1 availability remains in doubt. What does this mean for Winnipeg’s playoff chances against the St.
Louis Blues? How will Arniel deploy his lines once Vilardi returns? When might Ehlers come back? Can the Jets avenge their 2019 playoff loss, and when will their series start? Here’s everything we’ve learned about the Jets’ 2025 Stanley Cup playoff drive so far. First up: the Blues Winnipeg will face the Blues in Round 1, with the series beginning at Canada Life Centre this weekend. This 2019 rematch was achieved in dramatic fashion: Joel Eriksson Ek sent the Minnesota Wild to overtime against the Anaheim Ducks with just 22 seconds left in the third period and Minnesota’s net empty to clinch the first wild-card spot in the West.
We prefer white noise 🧊 pic.twitter.com/5WKSyIlRim — Winnipeg Jets (@NHLJets) April 16, 2025 Winnipeg went 3-1-0 against the Blues this season, with one of its wins in a shootout.
St. Louis revamped its game upon hiring Jim Montgomery late in November. The Blues were one of the NHL’s top teams down the stretch, outscoring their opponents 99-60 since the 4 Nations Face-Off — an even better spread than the Jets’ 71-55 advantage in that same time frame.
When they played at Canada Life Centre on April 7, both teams defended brilliantly, but the Jets kept the pressure up until Kyle Connor stole the puck from Pavel Buchnevich and Alex Iafallo buried Connor’s rebound in the third period for the game winner. Advertisement No team earned more points in the standings from the 4 Nations break through today than St. Louis (41); the Blues also led the league in goals per game with 3.
81 while running the seventh-best power play and eighth-best penalty kill during that time frame. Winnipeg creates more scoring chances, but both teams have been stingy defensively, backed by excellent goaltending. We’ll deep-dive the matchup in the coming days.
In the meantime, one reasonable takeaway is that the Blues are a great team playing inspired hockey under a new head coach, just as they were back in 2019. Another would be that this Jets team is far more resilient than the one that saw Kevin Hayes stop his own breakaway attempt and Jacob Trouba try woefully to eat a puck against the endboards as the seconds ticked down. Game 1 could be Saturday or Sunday at this point There is currently a BTO concert scheduled at Canada Life Centre on Saturday.
There is also an agreement for that concert to be moved, if it becomes necessary to start Game 1 against the Blues on Saturday. The Enterprise Center in St. Louis has building conflicts of its own: a Brooks & Dunn concert on April 25 and a Katt Williams performance on April 26.
There are combinations that work with Games 1 and 3 on Saturday and Monday in Winnipeg. There are combinations that work with Games 1 and 3 on Sunday and Tuesday in Winnipeg, too. We’re all guessing until the NHL sorts out its game of scheduling Tetris; expect an official announcement on Wednesday.
Winnipeg’s Game 1 forward lines and defence pairs Arniel will likely get Vilardi back as an option during Round 1. Game 1 seems like a long shot, given Vilardi took the ice for the first time on Tuesday. Ehlers won’t be available, while Logan Stanley appears to have re-emerged as a front-runner for left-side duties with Luke Schenn on the third pair.
Here are projected Jets lines, based on what Arniel chose on Saturday against Chicago — with Ehlers healthy — and the options he went with on Sunday when he rested Josh Morrissey, Neal Pionk, Adam Lowry and Schenn against Edmonton: Arniel doesn’t plan on resting his top-end talent against Anaheim on Wednesday, saying the Jets are “all in” with their lineup. The Jets have the opportunity to set a new franchise record in points — they’re tied with the 2017-18 edition at 114 — but Arniel’s decision is more about keeping his players in rhythm. His players want to play — or, put another way, they don’t want to not play: otherwise, the break between Sunday against Edmonton and Game 1 against St.
Louis would be too big a disruption. Thus, Wednesday night’s game will provide an enormous clue about Arniel’s Game 1 plans. Advertisement For now, the tweaks will be minor.
Niederreiter is first in line to join Vladislav Namestnikov and Cole Perfetti on the second line. If Niederreiter gets that job, Brandon Tanev will play the shutdown role with Adam Lowry and Mason Appleton, perhaps appropriately reminiscent of the 2017-18 Lowry-Tanev-Andrew Copp line. Whether it’s Iafallo up top, Niederreiter and Namestnikov on line two, Tanev on line three or Barron on line four, Winnipeg has traded for at least one player per line who strikes me as the ideal kind of “annoying” to play against.
“That’s a part of those guys,” Arniel said. “That’s their DNA ..
. You need it over the course of 82 games but in the playoffs, you really see it.” Without Vilardi to start and without Ehlers for what could become weeks, the Jets will need to get by on a bit more of that grit and determination.
Iafallo’s first-line promotion has been a revelation in that regard, with the progressive demonstration of forechecking and net-driving skills that have always been there. Now Niederreiter is headed for an elevated role, while Lowry’s shutdown line — already one of the most heavily relied-upon defensive groups in hockey — will become all the more important. “The difference was our line gives up three against the (Nathan) MacKinnon line,” Lowry said after Game 5 last year.
Winnipeg has lost some of its margin for error in the form of Ehlers and Vilardi’s injuries, so Lowry’s importance soars anew. It may be a good thing that the St. Louis-born Lowry has something to prove.
More injury news, potential lineup wrinkles, matchup concerns Iafallo’s strong play gives the Jets a decision to make when Vilardi returns. Could the Jets ease Vilardi in, perhaps giving him a second-line assignment with Namestnikov and Perfetti, allowing Niederreiter to play on Lowry’s wing? The Jets have hesitated to play Vilardi or Perfetti at centre, preferring to keep as much speed as possible in the middle of the ice. Arniel could run Namestnikov between Perfetti and Vilardi while giving Jordan Kyrou’s line to Lowry and Robert Thomas’ line to Scheifele as he did at home earlier this month.
The Jets won the flow of play battle in both the Lowry vs. Kyrou and Scheifele vs. Thomas matchups, ultimately getting Iafallo’s game-winning goal.
Advertisement Arniel says he hopes to have the “headache” of picking between Vilardi and Iafallo on his top line sooner than later. We know defence prospect Elias Salomonsson won’t play against Anaheim. Connor Hellebuyck is expected to start, warming up for the playoffs after getting Sunday off.
Rasmus Kupari is day to day on his way back from concussion protocol. On defence, it’s possible Stanley doesn’t get the third-pairing job alongside Schenn. We may see Haydn Fleury at times, while Colin Miller also provides an all-right-handed option.
The Stanley-Schenn pairing gives up a lot in terms of footspeed, and the idea of them going head-to-head with the Kyrou or Thomas lines could be frightening to Jets fans. If that’s a concern, take confidence from Arniel and defence coach Dean Chynoweth’s control of matchups. Stanley played just 1:03 against Thomas and 1:36 against Kyrou on April 7, with the Blues’ star forwards getting a steady diet of minutes against Winnipeg’s top two pairs.
The most negative thing we can say There’s a chance Ehlers has played his last shift as a Winnipeg Jet. If there was ever a season that put Ehlers in position to silence playoff critics, it was this one. He was great at five-on-five — again — and a key cog on Winnipeg’s top power play for the first time.
Perfetti’s emergence and Namestnikov’s doggedness, combined with Arniel’s matching of the Lowry and Scheifele lines, gave Ehlers a thoroughly winnable secondary scoring role with established chemistry. If five-on-five offence dried up, challenging Ehlers’ approach, his linemates could pick up the slack and the power play could provide confidence. His week-to-week absence means any playoff return will require Ehlers to ramp up to incredible pace and intensity from a relative standstill.
Ehlers has struggled to manage the feat in the past; he missed two playoff games in 2021 and four in 2023, contributing to a career playoff stat line of just 14 points in 37 games. Some stories end sadly; Ehlers may not get the chance to put his Jets playoff demons to rest. He’s a pending UFA and his future remains up in the air.
Advertisement The most positive thing we can say These Jets are better and more playoff-ready than any of the recent versions before them. Ehlers is one player; the Jets are a better team than they were against Colorado in 2024, Vegas in 2023 or St. Louis in 2019.
They’ve controlled a bigger share of the play than the Blues have at five-on-five, despite St. Louis’ dominant stretch run. They’re a more complete team with star players still wearing the scar tissue of last season’s defeat.
St. Louis was the least desirable among the three teams that entered Tuesday night as potential opponents, but Winnipeg is as undesirable an opponent as any team in the league. As subscriber Adam B.
put it earlier this week, these Jets are angry . What better place than here, what better time than now? This is the best Winnipeg Jets team since the one that made the Western Conference final. There’s a chance it’s the best Jets team of all time.
It’s made history, winning the city’s first Central Division title, regular-season Western Conference title and Presidents’ Trophy in city or franchise history. If there was ever a year for a playoff run in Winnipeg, this is that year. There’s plenty of adversity in the form of injuries, recent failures and an old playoff nemesis at the top of its game.
There’s also a tremendous Jets team better prepared to turn adversity from an excuse into a reason that its success was worth celebrating. (Top photo of Canada Life Centre during the 2024 playoffs: David Lipnowski / Getty Images).
