Winnipeg Jets Close the Book on Perfetti While the Hellebuyck Question Lingers

For the first time all summer, the Winnipeg Jets got to exhale. The week's Winnipeg Jets news was less about new business than about the dust settling on old business: Cole Perfetti met the media after signing his five-year deal, Kevin Cheveldayoff threw cold water on the Shane Doan speculation, and the Connor Hellebuyck trade chatter kept humming along in the background like a fridge you have stopped hearing. After a down season that demanded real change and an offseason that delivered a fair amount of it, late July in Winnipeg is now mostly about loose ends — and one very large unresolved question in the crease.

Perfetti Gets Paid, and Gets Closure

The biggest domino fell on July 15, when Perfetti signed a five-year, $30 million contract — a $6 million cap hit, nearly doubling the $3.25 million number on his expiring deal — and this week he sat down for his first extended media availability since putting pen to paper. The path here was bumpier than the ending suggests. Perfetti filed for arbitration on July 5, a move Cheveldayoff shrugged off as procedural, and the sides got the long-term deal done well before anyone had to sit in a hearing room.

The bet is on the player, not the résumé. Perfetti managed just 32 points last season after a high-ankle sprain wrecked the front half of his year, and he has admitted he came back "a hair too early." Winnipeg is paying for the version of Perfetti who looked like a top-six fixture before the injury — and given how badly this team needed secondary scoring last season, they need that version to show up in October.

The Hellebuyck Question Won't Leave

The other storyline refuses to resolve. Hellebuyck, the three-time Vezina Trophy winner with five years left on his contract, remains a Jet — but Cheveldayoff has confirmed he is listening to proposals, and nobody has met his asking price yet. Buffalo comes up most persistently in the reporting, with Carolina and San Jose floated depending on the week. This week's contribution to the discourse came from TSN's Bryan Hayes, who argued on air that Hellebuyck should stay in Winnipeg. Plenty of Jets fans agree. Plenty of others watched last season and wonder if the timeline still fits.

What keeps the speculation alive is the goalie the Jets already signed. Stuart Skinner arrived on July 1 on a two-year, $7.5 million deal, and that contract reads two ways: reasonable insurance behind a workhorse, or a succession plan waiting for a trade call. ESPN's headline on the signing said the quiet part out loud — the Jets added to the trade speculation by making it. Until Hellebuyck is either moved or starts opening night, this is the story that eats all the others.

How the Winnipeg Jets Got Here

None of this happens after a normal season, and 2025-26 was not one. A year removed from a Presidents' Trophy, the Jets went 35-33-12 and were eliminated on April 14, finishing 11 points behind Los Angeles for the final wild card. The collapse had layers: scoring fell from 3.35 goals per game to 2.81 — tied for 24th in the league — and Hellebuyck's November knee surgery sent the team into a 4-8-1 skid without him. The killer was an 0-7-4 stretch from mid-December through early January that dropped Winnipeg to the bottom of the Western Conference with half a season still to play.

The strange part is that the top of the lineup held up its end. Mark Scheifele put up 101 points, Kyle Connor added 90, and Gabriel Vilardi chipped in 67. The problem was everything underneath — which is why the Perfetti bet, and the rest of the offseason, is aimed squarely at the middle of the roster.

The Rest of the Offseason Haul

Cheveldayoff called his two big July 1 additions his number-one targets, and the list since free agency opened looks like this:

• Mario Ferraro, three years at $12 million ($4 million per) — a hard-minutes defender who spent his whole career in San Jose and adds bite to the second pair.
• Stuart Skinner, two years at $7.5 million to back up — or eventually replace — Hellebuyck.
• Henry Thrun, a one-year, two-way depth deal on the blue line.
• A new ECHL affiliation with the expansion Bloomington Bison, announced July 8.

The Jets still have roughly $10.7 million in cap room by outside estimates, and the rumor mill has connected them to leftover free agents like Anthony Mantha, Eeli Tolvanen, and Michael Bunting, with trade-board names such as Shane Wright floated speculatively. Nothing this week suggested any of it is imminent. The one piece of actual unfinished business is defenseman Tyrel Bauer, now the club's last unsigned restricted free agent — a Moose stalwart the organization reportedly may try to sign longer-term to keep him clear of waiver trouble.

Doan Talk, Björck, and the Pipeline

The week's most Winnipeg story involved a man who has not played in nearly a decade. Asked about Shane Doan — drafted by the original Jets in 1995, most recently a Maple Leafs front-office man — and his reported visit to town, Cheveldayoff downplayed the whole thing: "Shane came to town several weeks ago and had a visit. But I'm not sure there's anything more to that than just a visit." That is not a no, exactly, but it moved the story from simmer to back burner.

The pipeline news was more concrete. Viggo Björck, the Swedish center Winnipeg took eighth overall in June, signed his three-year entry-level contract on July 13 after Djurgården released him to come to North America; he will open 2026-27 with either the Jets or the Manitoba Moose. His junior numbers — 74 points in 42 Swedish junior games, plus a strong World Juniors — explain why the organization moved so fast. The Moose also did some shopping this week, adding forward Mikey Milne and defenseman Evan Nause on one-year deals. And in the feel-good file, Blake Wheeler spent a radio hit talking up an upcoming Jets alumni game and the chance to get old linemates back together.

What's Next for the Winnipeg Jets

The 2026-27 schedule arrived on July 16, and it gave Winnipeg two dates worth circling immediately:

• Oct. 2: the season opener at home against Boston at Canada Life Centre, the start of the league's new 84-game slate.
• Oct. 25: the Tim Hortons NHL Heritage Classic against Montreal, outdoors at Princess Auto Stadium.
• November: the busiest month of the season with 15 games.
• Feb. 4-12: a nine-day All-Star break, followed by a six-game homestand March 1-13.

Between now and training camp in September, the checklist is short: sign Bauer, decide whether any of that cap space gets spent, and keep answering the same Hellebuyck question until it answers itself.

Zoom out, and this stretch of Winnipeg Jets news describes a franchise trying to thread a needle — retooling the middle of the roster around a core that still produced a 101-point scorer, while deciding whether the best goalie of his generation is part of the next good team or the asset that builds it. Perfetti's contract says the Jets believe the window is still open. What they do with Hellebuyck between now and October will say whether they actually mean it.