AS I SEE IT COLUMN: Does Hellebuyck want out? If so, good riddance

If you saw Connor Hellebuyck’s interview last week, this much is clear: he is seriously questioning his future in Winnipeg and has doubts about the Jets ever winning the Stanley Cup, the only silverware he hasn’t yet won.

He talked about the “chaos” in front of him, complained about how many screens and tipped shots he had to deal with and questioned management’s roster decisions. Sadly but unsurprisingly, his disappointment about the season had to do with everyone except himself. Hellebuyck’s complete and utter lack of accountability, introspection and self-awareness is astonishing.

He made a comment that proved – yet again – that Hellebuyck at times can be completely unattached to reality. He had the audacity to say his game “wasn’t different before or after” the Olympics. Huh? He lost a bunch of games when he returned from Milan, when Jets fans hoped he might bring some Olympic magic to the Jets crease. Didn’t happen.

We’re not idiots Connor. You did not play as well after the Olympics as you did during. Not even close. Please don’t insult our intelligence.

This is not the first time Hellebuyck disrespected Jets fans by making comments in an end-of-season interview that were demonstrably false.

In 2024 the Jets lost in five games to Colorado. Hellebuyck set an all-time NHL record for allowing the most goals in a five-game series. Yet he had the nerve to tell the media that he had just played “the best hockey of my career.” That was wildly untrue.

During his interview last week Hellebuyck talked about goaltending analytics being wrong, implying he had actually played much better than his statistics suggested.

This also makes no sense. If he really is a student of analytics he has to know that his record after the Olympics was not good and that overall, his playoff performances are light years away from his award-winning regular season performances.

Hellebuyck deserves a lot of credit for being great in the regular season and for his off-ice interests in children’s mental health. But he deserves no credit for his incredibly inconsistent and frustrating play when games really matter: the playoffs.

With Hellebuyck between the pipes, the Jets have made it out of the second round exactly once. For a netminder who is supposed to be the best goalie in the world, that is entirely unacceptable.

Can you name one post-season series where the Jets were outplayed but came out victorious because of Hellebuyck’s play? You can’t, for one simple reason: it has never happened.

If Hellebuyck asks for a trade, the good news for the Jets is that coming off his spectacular play in the Olympics, he is peak trade bait material. If the Jets tried trading him after his horrific playoffs last year, where he was yanked in all three games in St. Louis, the return package would have been significantly less than what the Jets can get for him now.

There is talk that he wants to be traded to Florida, where he’ll be reunited with Paul Maurice, be teammates with Olympic buddy and dirtiest player in hockey Keith Tkachuk, live in a warmer climate, pay less taxes and be back in his excited states of America.

If it’s a Hellebuyck-for-Panther’s-goalie-Sergei-Bobrovsky deal, I would make that trade in a heartbeat. Bobrovsky is a proven playoff winner, having won two Stanley Cups.

Hellebuyck – if we’re being factual, honest, attached to reality and not sugar-coating things like the Winnipeg media so often does when it comes to Hellebuyck’s lousy postseason performance history – is a proven playoff loser.

He would do well to learn some humility, like Jonathan Toews and Adam Lowry showed in their interviews.

Thanks, Connor, for the regular season memories. No thanks for the post-season nightmares.