Why are the Jets so bad?

The Jets get plenty of shots and can't finish them

Winnipeg isn't short of chances. The Jets put 27.6 shots on goal a game, 15th in the league and one more than last season. Only 8.8% go in, the worst rate in the NHL (the league average is 11.6%).

Shooting like an average team would have meant about 12 more goals, turning a minus-19 goal differential into roughly minus-7. And it isn't a power-play problem: at 5-on-5, the Jets rank 27th in finishing.

It showed in the nine-game skid that ended Tuesday: 16 goals on 240 shots, and five one-goal losses. Even Tuesday's win fit the pattern. The Jets outshot Montreal 47-22 and still trailed 4-0 with under three minutes left.

Five of the nine losses in the skid came by one goal

Jets5-8-3

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+1

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−4

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−1

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−7

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It's everyone except Kyle Connor

Connor is off to a monster start, with 13 goals on 19.4% shooting. Take him out and the rest of the Jets have 26 goals on 374 shots. That's 7%, almost two points worse than any team in the league (Calgary is next at 9.0%).

The guys who should be scoring are Mark Scheifele and Gabriel Vilardi. Both have buried about 19% of their shots over the last six seasons. This year they have 3 goals on 65 shots between them, about 9 goals short of normal.

• Scheifele had gone four straight games without a point before a three-assist night in the 6-4 loss in Tampa.
• Dawson Mercer, the main forward back in the Hellebuyck trade, has no goals on 10 shots in six games.
• Arniel reunited Connor, Scheifele and Vilardi for Tuesday's game in Montreal. Connor scored twice; Scheifele had two assists.

Larkin was half right about the goalies

Hellebuyck never played for Winnipeg this season. He was suspended for skipping camp and traded Oct. 23, which left the net to Stuart Skinner, signed July 1 as insurance.

Skinner was great early, stopping 91.7% over his first four games. Then he went cold, just as Larkin warned, stopping 86.3% in six games during the skid. He got pulled in Tampa and again in the 7-0 loss in Carolina.

Over the whole season, Jets goalies have stopped 88.2% of shots, 26th in the league. That's about 4 goals worse than an average team. It hurts, but it's a third of what the shooting has cost.

Jets goaliesBelow average, not the main reason

.881Skinner, 11 games

.871Stevenson, 5 games

.913Daws, 2 games

.890NHL average

Skinner called Hellebuyck "the best goalie in the world" the day he signed. He wasn't carrying the Jets anymore, though. Hellebuyck stopped 89.5% of shots last season, exactly league average, and the Jets missed the playoffs with him in net.

Expect more goals, starting with Vancouver

Shooting this cold rarely lasts a full season, so the goals should come, mostly from Scheifele and Vilardi. Thursday is a good spot: the Canucks visit Winnipeg with the league's worst record and worst save percentage (.861).

Don't expect a contender, though. The Jets get only 48.5% of the shot attempts at 5-on-5 (21st) and give up the 8th-most shots on goal, the play-driving problem Larkin flagged. Captain Adam Lowry said after the 7-0 loss in Carolina that every facet of the game hadn't been good enough.

Hellebuyck comes back with the Devils on Nov. 10. Our read on which hot and cold NHL starts are luck covers the rest of the league, and our NHL predictions have every game.