First off, Jake spent all summer rehabbing his shoulder. Second, on a ton of HItmen goals, you see Jake celebrating with his teammates. He's racking up pluses at an insane rate, even if he isn't getting an assist on all those plays. A big reason for this is because he seems to have been tasked with playing point on the PP and stays extremely high after his team enters the zone. His defensive play is getting surprisingly good surprisingly quickly as a result and it allows Tambellini et al to get deep in the offensive zone without fear of being caught the other way. Since the Hitmen have 30 GF and 1 GA in their last 4 games, clearly it's working.
So how is Jake doing with this more defensive deployment? Check out the points/60 on the right side of this CHLstats screenshot:
That's just ridiculous.