Winnipeg Jet 30 Goal Scorers

My heart hurts. Saw a post on the Twitter last week after Kyle Connor scored his 30th of the season. Well done by the way Mr. Connor. Your 4th time reaching thirty plus! Thirty goals is thirty goals in any day and age. It’s a benchmark. Many good players don’t hit 30 very often. Jonathan Toews as done it three times. Brad Marchand? Four. Nicklas Backstrom? One. Evgeny Kuznetsov? None. Regardless, the post I saw showed that Kyle Connor was now second in Jets history with four 30 goal seasons behind only Ilya Kovalchuk who has seven (still waiting for a picture of Kovalchuk in a Jet’s jersey. Anyone?).

Kyle Connor 4 x 30 Goal Seasons!

So. Yes. The NHL is wrong. Not wrong but lumping in Thrashers’ stats with Jets 2.0 while the Coyotes celebrate Dale Hawerchuk and Thomas Steen? It is just wrong. You have heard my rant before. So here we go. Actual Winnipeg Jets who have scored 30 or more in a season!

Right now, the numbers are a little thin. While goals scoring seems to be on the upswing (6.12 per game as of this writing) it has been hard to score NHL goals during the last 20 years as opposed to the 20 previous (almost 8 GPG in 1988). Only 4 Jets during the 2.0 era have scored 30 in a season. In fact, until Chevy’s draft and develop model kicked in, we didn’t have a 30 goal scorer from 2013 – 2016!

How many Jets all-time have scored 30? You might be surprised to hear that it is thirty. Thirty-thirty! Mind you, 16 of them have only done it once in a Jet jersey. Remember how good and young our team was in the early 90s? Keith Tkachuk, Teemu Selanne and Alexei Zhamnov? Ya. Only four 30 goal seasons among them. Thomas Steen scored over 250 goals for the Jets but had only one 30 goal season. See? Not that easy. Let's go back. Waaay back.

Thirty Goal Seasons WHA

These guys could score. They didn’t have names like the Production Line or the Hot line for nothing. Ten players totaled for 20, thirty goals seasons in just 7 years. Bobby Hull had five and Anders Hedberg had four. They had five thirty goal scorers in each of 2 different seasons!

Thirty Goal Seasons NHL 1.0

Scoring was good in the 1980s. Run and gun. Hudson Bay Rules. Stand up goalies. Thirteen Jets during the 1980s amassed 29 thirty goal seasons. Dale Hawerchuk had eight straight (and 2 more for the Sabres). Hawerchuk’s winger, Paul Maclean had six. Morris Lukowich had 5 (one in the WHA). We had six, thirty goal scorers in 1984-85. An NHL record.

Thirty Goal Seasons NHL 2.0

As said before, things have been a little quiet. A combination of rules, teamplay and goaltending styles/equipment have slowed down the onslaught of scoring. Kyle Connor scoring 30 goals for the 4th time is a big deal! The guy can gun. Nothing against him. Only Alex Ovechkin has more 5 v 5 goals in the last five seasons. Other 30 goal seasons for the Jets as of late are Mark Scheifele with two and Patrick Laine with three.

All-Time Winnipeg Jet 30 Goal Seasons

So here they are. All 30 Jets to score at least 30 in a season. Some big names here and some not so big names. Could you have guessed Andrew McBain was tied with Mark Scheifele? So Kyle Connor is actually 6th (or tied for 5th) on the all-time Jet list. Still, pretty heady company. A few more seasons like this and he could be up against the great Hawerchuk! Oh ya. And there have been 28 forty goal seasons!

Dale Hawerchuk 8

Paul Maclean 6

Bobby Hull 5

Morris Lukowich 5*

Anders Hedberg 4

Kyle Connor 4

Patrik Laine 3

Ulf Nilsson 2

Peter Sullivan 2

Kent Nilsson 2

Willy Lindstrom 2*

Andrew McBain 2

Keith Tkachuk 2

Mark Scheifele 2

Norm Beaudin 1

Chris Bordeleau 1

Veli-Pekka Ketola 1

Lucien Deblois 1

Thomas Steen 1

Laurie Boschman 1

Brian Mullen 1

Doug Smail 1

Brent Ashton 1

Pat Elyniuk 1

Paul Fenton 1

Ed Olczyk 1

Teemu Selanne 1

Nelson Emerson 1

Alexei Zhamnov 1

Evander Kane 1

as of March 2022

*WHA & NHL