Team Canada snub puts on a show
There are a few people around the National Hockey League who don’t think Mark Scheifele is good enough to play for Team Canada at the 2025 Four Nations’ Face-Off.
Those people, namely Don Sweeney and Jon Cooper, have not been paying attention.
The week after the Canadian team was named and players such as Travis Konecny, Sam Bennett, Anthony Cirelli and Brandon Hagel were named to the squad ahead of the sixth-leading scorer among Canadian players in the NHL, Scheifele was on fire.
In the past week, the 31-year-old centre had four goals and six points in two games to lift the Jets to a first-place record of 26-10-1. The Jets won both games and are now 8-2-1 in their last 11.
Because of his superb play, he was named the NHL’s First Star of the Week. It was the first time this year and the eighth time in his career that Scheifele has been chosen as one of the Stars of the Week.
He had three goals and four points (his 10th career hat-trick and second of the year) in a 5-2 win over the Leafs in Toronto on Dec. 23. He also notched his sixth game-winning goal of the year. He became the first player in franchise history to wear only a Jets uniform to record 10 career hat-tricks. (Ilya Kovalchuk had 10 with the Atlanta Thrashers)
Scheifele followed that performance on Dec. 28, with a goal and an assist in the Jets 4-2 comeback victory over the red-hot Ottawa Senators. It was his 13th multi-point performance of 2024-25 in just 37 games. The 31-year-old Scheifele has 22 goals and 44 points this season, good enough for 15th overall in the league in scoring and sixth among Canadian players.
He has placed among the Top 10 league leaders in game-winning goals (t-2nd; six), shooting percentage (minimum: 1 SOG/GP – 5th; 25.9 percent) and goals (t-5th; 22). He has already reached 20-goal plateau this season, the 10th straight season in which he’s scored at least 20 goals.
The 31-year-old from Kitchener, Ont., who was the Jets first ever selection (seventh overall) in 2011, is on pace to surpass his single-season highs in goals (49) and points (98).
He had a brief period when he slumped this season but that was chalked up to a painful wrist injury that affected his shot. For the most part, Scheifele has been sensational this season.
However, he wasn’t “good enough” to make Team Canada and that just might have been the best thing to happen to the Jets this season. The snub has lit a fire under Scheifele that has made him one of the best players in the league for the past month – and certainly for the past week.
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