The perfect pairing
Jets looking to buy for Stanley Cup playoff push, while Senators are ready to sell if necessary
Played on a line with (Mark Stone) at that world championship. He was a fun guy to play with. He does it all. Mark Scheifele
On the surface, it was just another mid-February tilt between one of the NHL’s top teams and its worst.
The Jets and Ottawa, a contender versus a team not even pretending anymore.
What made Saturday night’s tilt — a 4-3 overtime win by Ottawa — worthy of attention, not to mention a national television audience, was the off-ice drama swirling in the background.
It was the perfect storm nine days before the trade deadline: an aggressive buyer willing to pay a steep price to go for a Stanley Cup (the Jets) meeting a seller coming to the realization it won’t be able to keep some of its blue-chip players from going to free agency (the Sens).
The stage has been set for days. Ottawa had dispatched team brass to Winnipeg for the week to scout not only the Jets, but their AHL farm team, the Manitoba Moose. Meanwhile, Jets scouts had been following the Senators, too.
The two troops no doubt collected reams of intelligence with one final judgment left to make: from a head-to-head meeting at Portage Avenue and Hargrave Street.
After all, what better way to measure a potential acquisition than seeing him in action against the players you’re most familiar with?
It had all the makings of one of those “just-down-thehall” deals, where a traded player only has to report to the other team’s headquarters a few dozen steps away.
Coincidentally, one of the players that’s happened to was in the building, Saturday: Sens goalie Anders Nilsson was a Vancouver Canuck until just before those teams squared off in Ottawa in early January.
“I had lunch (with the Canucks), then I got a phone call that I was traded here to Ottawa,” Nilsson told reporters that day. “It’s been a different day and I’m going to remember it when I get older.”
Of course, Nilsson wasn’t the focus this time, but rather his teammate, Mark Stone.
IfPaul Stastny was the perfect fit for the Jets last year at this time, Stone might be it this year.
He may not be a centre, but the Jets have two rather large questions on the wing, in Nik Ehlers (injured) and Patrik Laine (ineffective).
Both struggled to produce in last year’s playoffs, Ehlers managing not a single goal in 15 games, Laine a middling five in 17.
Out since Jan. 4, Ehlers still has a week or two left in his recovery, and while that might give him time to get his game playoff-ready, the Jets won’t have that answer by the trade deadline.
Laine could snap out of his funk (one goal in his last 21 games) any day, but what if he doesn’t? What if he’s producing at a similar rate to last year’s post-season, or worse, going into April?
Stone appears to be a potentially perfect solution, a big, dependable-at-bothends forward who scored his career-high 27th goal of the season on Saturday, his fifth straight season with 20 or more.
He’s 26 years old, with a contract that expires this summer.
Oh, and did we mention he’s born and raised in Winnipeg, a product of Westwood Collegiate who went on to become a junior star for the Brandon Wheat Kings?
Serendipity, destiny — take your pick.
Stone was also a member of Team Canada for the 2012 world junior championship and 2016 world championship, where he was teammates with Jets centre Mark Scheifele.
“Played on a line with him, actually, at that world championship,” Scheifele said. “He was a fun guy to play with. He doesitall. Hedoes everything you want in a player. Plays good D, has a good stick, shoots the puck well, passes the puck well — does all the right things.
“He’s a great player and would make any team better.”
Of course, Scheifele’s not the GM, he reminded us two or three times.
Stone is such a hot topic around the Jets organization the head coach who’d benefit the most from his acquisition wouldn’t touch him.
“He’s not on my team,” a curt Paul Maurice said, eschewing his usual praise for opposing stars in favour of what amounted to a no comment. “If I like a guy and say nice things about a guy, you can get yourself in a whole world of trouble.”
Who’d worry about such a silly level of “tampering” if trade talks weren’t in high gear? Stone, himself, was saying even less.
Where most local products are made available to reporters in the morning, he wasn’t.
At the very eye of a storm, of course, it’s quiet.