AS I SEE IT COLUMN: What the Hellebuyck? Connor gives breathtaking analysis of his playoff performance

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/05/2024 (413 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After writing about sports here for 40 years there isn’t much that surprises me, but I was beyond gob smacked when I saw Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck assess his play after the Jets once again failed to make it past the first round of the playoffs.

Here’s his verbatim quote at his end of season press availability: “You’re probably not going to believe when I say I was playing the best hockey of my career.”

Now it’s one thing to think that (as detached from reality as it is), but it’s entirely another to say it out loud, with TV cameras rolling.

By any hockey metric or standard, it is simply impossible that Hellebuyck played the best hockey of his career when Colorado dispatched the Jets in overwhelming fashion in five games.

It’s beyond insulting to all Jets fans and the media for Hellebuyck to say that he honestly believes we just saw the best that Connor has ever played. Our eyes made it clear that was not the case and the gruesome numbers make it even clearer that Hellebuyck played far below the calibre he displayed during a great regular season that will likely earn him a second Vezina trophy.

When Hellebuyck is at his best, he is calm and effortless in the crease. His efficiency of movement is stellar. But in these playoffs, like so many playoffs before, Hellebuyck was flopping around on the ice like a fish out of the Whitemouth River.

Statistically, Hellebuyck had a 0.879 save percentage and a goals against average of 5.23. The team in front of Hellebuyck shares plenty of blame for playing so poorly, but the fact remains that Hellebuyck was barely average, and that’s being generous. Those stats are light years from the Vezina-calibre numbers Hellebuyck put up in the regular season.

His shaky, substandard play resulted in the Jets setting a new all-time NHL record, and it’s not a pretty one. Never before has a team allowed five or more goals in the first five games of a post-season.

Hockey is a team game and the disciplined structure that made the Jets the best defensive team in the regular season once again evaporated in the playoffs.

That said, it is beyond delusional for Hellebuyck to say his best performance of his entire life led to such an ignominious record. Hellebuyck is now a mind-boggling 2-12 in his last 14 playoff games.

Elite, world-class goalies can steal a game (or even possibly a series) that their team has no right winning. That wasn’t even remotely close to happening against the Avs.

As shocking as it was to hear Hellebuyck say things that simply are not tethered to reality – asking us to not believe what we all saw with our own eyes – it was also shocking that not a single reporter in the room had the guts to call Hellebuyck out. So terrified are the reporters that they might lose their access to the dressing room or that they might hurt their “buddy-buddy” relationship with a player, that they simply let Hellebuyck utter that whopper without any push back. That’s pathetic, dreadful journalism.

The disconnect between what we saw with our eyes and Hellebuyck’s assessment of his play is similar to the disconnect when we see footage of the January 6 American rioters beating up police officers at the U.S. Capitol. Trump called those people “patriots.” But patriots don’t seriously injure 141 police officers. Patriots don’t scream “Kill Mike Pence.”

And good goalies playing the best hockey of their careers don’t flop all over the ice and lose four straight lopsided games. Good goalies playing the best hockey of their careers don’t have an abysmal 2-12 playoff record, nor do they allow the Avalanche to score more goals per game than any other playoff team in NHL history. As one TV panelist put, Hellebuyck got “ventilated” by Colorado.

I’ll leave it to professionals to figure out where Hellebuyck’s lack of self-awareness is coming from and what is causing such weapons-grade delusion.

But it is highly disturbing that he would say something so outlandish, so easily and provably untrue, out loud to the media and to Jets fans across the province.

Hellebuyck cannot possibly believe that he played the best hockey of his life against Colorado. If he does, something is clinically wrong.