Without a lot of fanfare, the off-season moves have already started for the Winnipeg Jets. In fact, one key piece to their forward group is already locked in for another two years.
Lost in the shuffle to end the season – and amid some of the dissenting noise that emerged out of the Jets dressing room – was the announcement of a contract extension for forward Cole Koepke.
Not much was known about Koepke when he signed with Winnipeg last summer, other than that he scored 10 goals with Boston the year prior and that he was another addition to the growing group of Duluth, Minn.-area natives on the team’s roster.
Get breaking National news
But as his first season progressed in Winnipeg – in particular, the latter half – Koepke became a tremendously valuable piece to the Jets’ fourth line and their specialty teams.
He finished this season with eight goals in seven fewer games than the year before with the Bruins, led the Jets in hits by a significant margin and watched his ice time grow by over three minutes per game from January to April.
What was even more impressive was that he had to overcome an injury and being made a healthy scratch several times early on, only to conclude the season by playing in 33 consecutive games.
In short, Koepke was the one off-season signing last summer that the Jets hit on and his two-year extension last month is the first move in an important reshaping of the team into a slightly younger and vastly quicker squad next season.
Blessed with blazing speed, the soon-to-be 28-year-old was also an exceptional penalty killer for Winnipeg, a solid fit both on and off the ice and a player genuinely thrilled about making Winnipeg home for another two years.
Of course, Koepke won’t ever lead the Jets in scoring or play in the top six, but every successful team requires a complement of grinders, checkers and hard-to-play-against players.
Cole Koepke is all of those.
He’s also very quiet and unassuming by nature and it’s probably fitting – at least for his personality – that his two-year contract extension got slightly lost in some of the other noise that emerged out of the Jets dressing room only a few short weeks ago.
Fire the gm