The Net Is the Least of Skinner's Problems

Four goals per game. That's what the Jets' defense has been surrendering over the last ten games—a full goal worse than the twenty games before that. The Ferraro signing and the Skinner deal were supposed to bend that curve. So far, the curve is winning.

Stuart Skinner didn't ask for this situation. He signed a two-year deal at $3.75 million AAV to compete for starts behind a three-time Vezina winner, not to absorb a franchise emergency. Connor Hellebuyck's suspension—handed down September 17th after he failed to report to training camp—collapsed that arrangement entirely. Skinner is now the unambiguous starter, and the organization is still publicly sorting out what to do with its most decorated goaltender. The GM's stated goal is to "get this right." Admirable. But the season opener doesn't wait for right.

Here's the structural problem my previous piece touched on but didn't fully reckon with: Skinner's effectiveness is downstream of a defense that currently has nothing behind it. The depth chart at the blue line is, at this moment, a collection of players who haven't produced meaningful minutes. Haydn Fleury is the nominal top defenseman on that depth chart, and the production numbers behind him are essentially empty all the way down. Elias Salomonsson, who was already on the injury list heading into September, remains out. Garrett Brown and Walker Duehr have since joined him. That's not a rotation under stress—that's a rotation that doesn't exist yet.

Josh Morrissey logged nearly 25 minutes a night last season and finished with 40 points at plus-15—he was the engine that kept Winnipeg's defense from being historically bad in 2026. Dylan DeMelo quietly posted a plus-13 beside him. Those two can anchor a top pair. But the question Skinner has to live with is what happens when the puck gets to the third and fourth defensive pairs, because what's currently projected behind Morrissey and DeMelo has no track record of NHL production at all. A goaltender can steal games with a competent defense in front of him. Against sustained zone time from a patchwork blue line, he's just absorbing damage.

The offensive side—Scheifele at 58 points in 49 games, Connor at 55 in 48—is real and it matters, but it's also the argument this franchise has been making for two years while the defense eroded around them. Last season's 35-47 finish happened with those two producing at elite rates. Points don't cancel goals-against; they just make the losses closer. The goaltending depth situation compounds all of this: Thomas Milic is the only goaltender with any meaningful playing time logged, which means Skinner is operating without a genuine backup ready to absorb a start if he hits a rough stretch early.

My read is this: the Hellebuyck suspension gets most of the headlines because it's the dramatic story, the star refusing to show, the franchise in standoff with its own franchise player. But the more consequential problem for the Jets' season is the one that doesn't have a name attached to it. It's the defensive depth chart that can't support a starter, the injury list that keeps growing, and the fact that 4.0 goals per game allowed is a number no goaltender—not Skinner, not anyone—can consistently overcome. The front office spent the summer trying to fix the net. The net may not be what breaks them.