Connor Hellebuyck must be in Vezina form to save Jets' season

WINNIPEG — If it seems unfair to ask Connor Hellebuyck to be perfect in order to keep the Winnipeg Jets’ season alive on Tuesday, that’s because it is. 

But it’s not asking too much of him to be more like the guy who’ll run away with the award he was officially nominated for on Monday than the guy who’s allowed the most goals through four games of these playoffs. 

Hellebuyck may not add the Stanley Cup to his trophy case in June, but he’s going to have a hard time looking at the Vezina he’s sure to collect then if he doesn’t come up with the biggest save he’s made since October. He’s the consensus best goaltender in the NHL—ahead of Thatcher Demko and Sergei Bobrovsky, who were also nominated for sterling regular seasons between the pipes—and he’ll struggle to digest appearing like an average one when it mattered most if that’s how his season ultimately wraps.

Heavy, we know.

We can only imagine how the 30-year-old feels about it right now—and that’s also because he ignored multiple requests from media to speak on Monday. 

We don’t know if Hellebuyck feels solely responsible for his .870 save percentage through this series, or if he’s justifiably irked by how little a chance the team in front of him has given him to put up better numbers.

Is it both? Probably.

Could Hellebuyck have come up with more saves than he has so far against the Colorado Avalanche? Of course. 

We’re talking about the NHL’s leader in goals saved above expected from October through mid-April, who suddenly ranks last in the category among all 23 goaltenders who have played even a second of playoff hockey. He’d be the last person debating he can be better.

But when you look at the shots that beat Hellebuyck in—and eventually chased him from—Sunday’s Game 4, for example, you can’t help but wonder how he’d have stopped three of four of them.

To think that the one from Cale Makar, which completed arguably the best individual effort of the playoffs so far, was the one Hellebuyck might like to have back is to know just how helpless he had to have felt in the end. It wouldn’t have mattered that much had he stopped it, with the Jets only scoring one goal themselves while leaving the other players who have hurt them the most in this series wide open in the slot for goals.

Of the 10 Artturi Lehkonen and Valeri Nichushkin have scored in this series, none were easier to come by than the three they combined for before Laurent Brossoit took Hellebuyck’s net for the third period of Sunday’s game. 

Still, the expectation at Canada Life Centre on Tuesday will be for Hellebuyck to turn water to wine.

Fair or not, that’s what it might take. 

But Jets fans should also demand for Mark Scheifele to make his own adjustments before calling on the coaching staff to make theirs, as he did on Sunday night. 

He may have led this team in scoring during the regular season after securing the same seven-year, $59.5-million contract extension Hellebuyck did. He may have put up five points through the first three games. 

But Scheifele also failed to record a single shot on net in a game the Jets lost by four goals and took no ownership of that before pointing the finger elsewhere.

Jets fans should also ask more of Nino Neiderreiter, who had the audacity to say, “I think we’ve got to change our game plan,” rather than owning the untimely—and completely unnecessary—penalty he took as part of a rash that cost Hellebuyck his net and Winnipeg Game 4.

Jets fans should know Hellebuyck can be even better than the best version he’s ever presented of himself at any point of his career, and it won’t matter if Scheifele and Neiderreiter and everyone else on his team fail to look inward and be much better than what they’ve shown so far in this series. 

Coach Rick Bowness has to do his part to help them counter Colorado’s speed, to help them find better routes to more efficient puck movement, to help them have clearer minds about sorting out the rush and killing plays before they ultimately cost the Jets goals, and he has to put the right players in—here’s looking at you, Cole Perfetti—and combine them in the right order.

But Bowness is absolutely right when he says, “You can make all of the adjustments that you want, if the intensity and everything else isn’t there it’s going to go for naught.”

He had to answer the tough questions reporters present at the Jets’ practice facility put to him on Monday.

Hellebuyck abstained and will have to let his play do the talking on Tuesday. 

It won’t say enough if it resembles what it has so far—like it’s good but not nearly on par with how good it was to make him the Vezina favourite.

“Every great team has a great goaltender, and this guy is a great goaltender,” Bowness said. “He deserves (the nomination).”

Hellebuyck will have to be great to keep this Jets season going.

If they force him to be perfect, that might be asking too much.