AS I SEE IT COLUMN: Scheifele’s Olympic non-snub and Hellebuyck proving he’s not the best goalie in the world

Congratulations to Team Canada winning bronze at the World Juniors. Finishing third in the world is impressive. Full stop.

Many hockey fans and broadcasters have described Mark Scheifele not making the Olympic team as a snub. Those people are wrong. It wasn’t a snub. It was a strategic decision.

Scheifele has been an elite player these past two years. The grit he showed playing just hours after his father passed away and the game he played against the Leafs after learning he didn’t make the Olympic roster, showed that Scheifele has enormous courage that matches his impressive skills.

He is undeniably one the best offensive players in the NHL, but he’s not better than the players named to the top two lines on Team Canada.

If Scheifele thinks he was robbed, can you even begin to imagine how Sam Bennett feels? He’s been to the Stanley Cup three years in a row (winning two of them), he was last year’s MVP in the playoffs and he played a pivotal role in Canada’s emotional 4 Nations win.

Despite those accomplishments, Bennett didn’t make the team.

What hurts Scheifele a lot is the lack of team success. Sure, a Mark Stone is slower than Scheifele, but he’s won a Stanley Cup and led his team deep into the playoffs. Scheifele has done neither. Team Canada made it clear that it wasn’t just looking for skill when composing its roster; it wanted to assemble a balanced team of past winners and role players who have experience playing in high pressure games. Scheifele simply does not have that.

Scheifele may still make the team if someone gets hurt, but as much as he did everything he possibly could to earn a spot, the top six forwards are objectively better and have more big-game experience, and he’s neither a shut-down forward nor a penalty-killing specialist, so there isn’t room for him in the bottom six.

Moving on to Hellebuyck, remember when the Jets were right in the thick of its tailspin in December and he had surgery? Almost everyone thought that things would turn around once Hellebuyck came back. After an impressive outing against the Washington Capitals, that seemed like a possibility.

Then reality struck. Hellebuyck proceeded to lose his next eight (and counting as of press time) starts.

I was among the many that hoped that he would come in, be rested, put the team on his shoulders, right the ship and get the Jets playing something close to kind of team they’ve been the last couple of years.

That doesn’t seem like too much to ask from the so-called “best goalie in the world.”

Hellebuyck has not been able to right the ship. It’s interesting that the same fans who are quick to blame backup goalie Eric Comrie for losses, always give Hellebuyck a free pass when he’s in the net for a long losing streak.

Good goalies are difference makers that help their teams win games that could go either way. Great goalies steal games their team has no right winning. Hellebuyck has proven he isn’t able to do either. (And we’re only looking at his play in the regular season. The calibre of his goaltending in the playoffs has been, to be charitable, light years below expectations.)

Hellebuyck is a very good goalie. He’s been superb the past couple of regular seasons, but since he’s been back from surgery, he frequently isn’t even the best goalie in whatever rink the Jets are playing in, demonstrably nowhere near the best on the planet. He’s being out-goalied by backup netminders. And yes, the team in front of him looks like a shell of its former self, but a goaltender with the kind of lofty superlatives that often surround Hellebuyck should be able to singlehandedly win some games.

Because it is so provably false, can we mercifully put to rest the notion that he is the best goalie in the world?