Winnipeg Jets Breakout Defenseman Getting Trade Interest

The Winnipeg Jets looked to have turned a corner and finally started to win games to get back in the playoff race, but have now lost two in a row and are still 31st in the NHL in points. The team has lost 22 of their past 27 games and have to be thinking about at least shuffling up the roster with trades.

There's never the guarantee that a pending UFA will stick around in Winnipeg as it is usually a team on players' no-trade list for multiple reasons. The Jets have to build from within and trade, but in a season where they aren't currently in the playoff hunt, they will be looking at moving assets that might not re-sign.

Among those is Logan Stanley. While so many players on the Jets are having bad seasons, he has gone the opposite way and has seemingly broken out. The massive d-man still only plays under 17 minutes per game, but has taken advantage of his ice time and been a force every game.

Elliotte Friedman reported, "There are a lot of teams with trade interest in Logan Stanley ahead of the deadline." That is probably where a Stanley trade will hold off to happen as the Jets still have a little time to potentially turn things around.

The 6'7 27-year-old had been a fringe NHL defenseman and hasn't played a full season in his career. The most he played was 63 games last season, but he's missed one game this season and has eight goals and 16 points, 91 penalty minutes, 75 hits, and 51 blocked shots. He plays a bit on the penalty kill, but that role should increase with the injuries the Jets have on the back-end.

Stanley is a third-pairing defenseman, but I wonder if he can become a second-pairing guy. He doesn't really have the opportunity on the Jets with their defense, but in the season he's having, he could fetch the Jets a mid-round pick, even pushing up to a second or third-round pick depending on the market and interest. Stanley is a UFA after the season with a $1.25 million AAV cap hit. We'll see how the Jets do over the next stretch and if noise surrounding Stanley picks up.