Connor Hellebuyck has requested a trade from the Winnipeg Jets. The team should not play along with the request, Cathal Kelly writes.Tony Gutierrez/The Associated Press
When Connor Hellebuyck re-signed in Winnipeg in 2023, it was suggested that he and the team had an understanding. He would choose them, and in return they would tailor the workplace to his needs.
“I had a good talk with [Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff] before camp,” Hellebuyck told Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman at the time. “How much he wanted to win. What he was willing to do to win. Those are important conversations to have because a guy could feel that way, and if he never says it, you don’t know. Your mind starts to wander.”
Every top pro has choices, but Hellebuyck made it seem that by taking almost US$60-million of Winnipeg’s money, he was doing them a favour. That impression was allowed to linger.
It resurfaced this week when Cheveldayoff was in the midst of explaining why he had just suspended Hellebuyck for refusing to show up to camp. Had the Jets promised to trade Hellebuyck if the team wasn’t good enough to suit him?
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Cheveldayoff denied it in strangely baroque terms – “Any notion around that would not have any merit ” – and then segued directly to a defence of the Jets’ competitiveness. The effect was to make it seem that if Hellebuyck is feeling sore, he has at least some reason to be.
Except he doesn’t.
The GM doesn’t skate. Only the players do. As such, how good the team is is entirely up to them.
If Hellebuyck thought the Jets should have been better last year, then maybe he should’ve tried being less crap himself. Having not done that, the acceptable reaction isn’t, ‘I can’t quite reach the eject button. Can you push it for me?’
This would be a garden-variety story of entitlement, were it not for the political and civic angles.
Hellebuyck, in front, at U.S. President Donald Trump’s state of the union address, basked in the limelight given to the U.S. hockey team after it won gold at the Olympics.Kenny Holston/The Associated Press
Hellebuyck was one of the adult glee club that was paraded before U.S. Congress after the Americans won Olympic gold. In pictures, he was the guy in front holding his hand over his heart. Part of this is clearly a rebuke of Canada. Add that to the widespread notion that nobody wants to play in Winnipeg, and you have more than a holdout hassle. What you’ve got is an existential crisis.
If Hellebuyck can whine his way out of town, the Jets should stop bothering with contracts altogether. Just make all deals an at-will situation. Like renting month to month. Maybe they could entice recruits by offering winter hardship bonuses. Cheveldayoff can swing by every morning and clear the snow off the players’ cars.
Whenever anyone wants to leave, they can just text Chevy and let him know: ‘T.S. Eliot was wrong. February is the cruellest month. Leaving for Florida.’
This is a sport played on ice, and all anyone playing it does is complain about the cold. You don’t hear the Canadian swim team moaning about how wet it is in Vancouver.
We’re beyond hockey now. This isn’t the Jets standing up for their sports business. It’s the Jets standing up for their city and their country.
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Winning this face-off is not about getting proper value back in a swap. It’s too late for that. Any sort of trade is a loss for the Jets. Of dignity, mainly.
Winning now is about absorbing and redistributing pain. The Jets have to stare Hellebuyck down until he cracks. If they don’t, he’s only the first.
Were it me, I’d sit the guy forever. I’d burn through whatever’s left of his prime, however that affected this season, or the next, or the next. Some things are more important. After sweating him for years, I’d tell Hellebuyck that the only place I’m willing to trade him is Magnitogorsk. Take it or leave it.
Because if Hellebuyck is allowed to swan off to a club he chooses, the Jets have given up. Don’t even bother pretending to want to attract the top talent. Everyone in the NHL will know to a certainty what they have to this point only suspected – that Winnipeg is the Devil’s Island of the NHL. It’s a place that castoffs drift onto, but if the current’s right, you can escape.
Having made his choice in signing a long-term contract with the Jets, Hellebuyck can and should be forced to live with the consequences of it, Cathal Kelly writes.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
Normally, fans of other teams could feel smug about how this is spinning out. It’s fun to watch your opponents flail.
But every Canadian hockey fan should feel the chill of this. First, Winnipeg. Next, your team.
The Ottawa Senators avoided a public humiliation by trading Brady Tkachuk when he was still fibbing about wanting to stay, but that doesn’t make it any less of an embarrassment. Ottawa – birthplace of the Stanley Cup – is now officially beneath Sunrise, Fla. – home of a very large Cheesecake Factory – on the hockey pecking order.
Canada’s NHL clubs remain the historic and financial foundation of the league, but are in actual danger of becoming second class. What’s the solution to this? An old-school national quota system? Top Canadians to Canada, top Americans to America and everyone draws lots for Swedes.
Maybe that will happen organically. The problem is that most Canadian-born NHLers prefer America, too. Lower taxes, and it’s never cost any of them a Tim Hortons ad.
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The first step in solving the problem is acknowledging it exists – someone no one connected to the NHL has been willing to do. For now, it’s an exodus without cause. The second step is drawing a line.
You can’t force anyone to come here, and who’d want to? If you need to be convinced that living in any part of this country is some sort of hardship duty, then I’d guess that your idea of culture is a drive-thru dry cleaners.
If you don’t want Canada, then Canada doesn’t want you. But whether it’s the White House or a Winnipeg Jet, you don’t get to dictate to us the terms of a deal you’ve chosen to go back on.
Nobody forced Hellebuyck to pick Manitoba – which, it isn’t often enough said, turned him into the sort of local icon he would never have become anywhere in the U.S.
But having made his choice, Hellebuyck can and should be forced to live with the consequences of it. If he doesn’t want to play here, he can’t play anywhere.