Seven potential off-season suitors for Jets' Connor Hellebuyck

We’re nowhere near the “writing is on the wall” stage with Connor Hellebuyck and the Winnipeg Jets.

That said, when general managers around the league gather with their inside circle at the bar, you can bet they’re all flipping over those cocktail napkins and sketching out what it might take to get the big guy out of Manitoba.

As our Jets scribe Ken Wiebe noted, it’s not as though Hellebuyck has one skate out the door or anything. But there’s clearly a lot to sift through with a team that just lost in five games in the first round, got put on blast by their first-year coach and has four big-time UFA situations to sort out by the summer of 2024.

Hellebuyck, Mark Scheifele, Blake Wheeler and Pierre-Luc Dubois can all, as it stands, walk for nothing about 14 months from now. Something has got to give here and should the Jets lean into a bit of a re-tool, Hellebuyck — who makes $6.2 million against the cap for one more year — did make it abundantly clear that’s not the preferred path for him at this stage of his career.

“Yeah, my main goal is to win a Stanley Cup, and I’m starting to run out of time and can feel it,” he said days after Winnipeg was dispatched by the Vegas Golden Knights. “You know, (Wheeler) talks about this all the time. It just flashes by. And I’m starting to understand.

“You do need to be in the hunt every single year. You’ve got to make the most of your years. But I’m going to make the most of whatever my situation is, give my all and give everything I can in the spot or the team that I have.”

Hellebuyck was his team’s MVP this past season, claimed the Vezina Trophy in 2020 and was the runner-up two years before that in 2017-18, when Winnipeg made the final four and we all thought this team was destined to bring a Cup to the city. If he went on the trade market this summer having just turned 30 years old, he would probably be the best puckstopper with plenty of good years ahead of him to become available via trade since a 27-year-old Roberto Luongo was acquired by the Vancouver Canucks from the Florida Panthers in 2006.

Whether or not a contract extension was part of the equation, you know Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff would be fielding a lot of calls. With that in mind, let’s identify some squads that would be fastest to the phone, figuring out what it might take to get one of the best goalies around in their crease.

It’s not a question of if the Kings will make a goaltending-related move this summer, it’s more about what tack they opt for. Pheonix Copley is under contract for next year and so is semi-forgotten man Cal Petersen. It just feels like there’s no chance that’s the goalie battery next fall for a team that’s now lost two straight first-round series to the Edmonton Oilers.

Maybe they try to bring trade deadline acquisition Joonas Korpisalo back on a deal that would cost less than Hellebuyck, but that’s not the kind of boss move that’s going to help the Kings punch through and reach their potential.

If the Jets were trading Hellebuyck as part of a re-tool, perhaps L.A. can sweeten the deal a bit and convince Winnipeg to take Petersen — who has two years left at a cap hit of $5 million — as a very reasonable reclamation project.

Obviously if Hellebuyck is moved he’s going to be part of the process, even if he doesn’t have any publicly known trade protection. And that’s where conversations could get interesting because three of the teams that might ultimately be great fits did not make the playoffs this year.

Why would a guy whose supreme goal is winning the Cup leave a team that did make the post-season for one that did not? Upward mobility, my friends.

It’s not hard to see that both the Ottawa Senators and Buffalo Sabres are on the rise. Both clubs have serious stud pieces in place all over the ice…except in goal.

We know Ottawa is not bringing back Cam Talbot and this young Sens team is going to be on the hunt for a stopper in coming months. Ottawa was already taking big swings last off-season with Alex DeBrincat and Claude Giroux; the team — which will have a new owner soon — is all in and adding Hellebuyck would be a massive sign the Sens have arrived.

The Sabres are essentially in exactly the same position, with pillar players at forward and defence. Buffalo probably wouldn’t send Devon Levi the other way, but you have to think Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen is on the table if you’re getting Hellebuyck back. Eric Comrie worked well with Hellebuyck in Winnipeg previously; maybe that’s your duo for a year while Levi marinates in the AHL.

Speaking of former teammates, Hellebuyck has a couple of them in Detroit in the form of Ben Chiarot and Andrew Copp. Like Copp, Hellebuyck is a Michigan guy. So while the Wings aren’t as obviously primed for a leap forward the way Ottawa and Buffalo are, perhaps Hellebuyck gets on board with the idea of playing close to home on a squad that is certainly trending up and would be that much better if he was on the scene.

The Wings, of course, just signed Ville Husso last summer. Finding a taker for his final two years probably wouldn’t be a huge problem, but — while they have the cap space — they could just opt to have a very expensive goalie tandem for one season and hope a Hellebuyck-Husso duo is one of the league’s best.

These might not be the type of clubs that immediately fit the profile of what Hellebuyck is looking for, but the reality is teams right on the precipice of winning a Cup or squads that have just won a championship have usually either figured out their goaltending or have too much money committed elsewhere to make it work.

That said, there is another category of clubs we should examine…

Eight squads are left chasing the Cup and, truly, it feels like they all have a chance. That said, we know punches are going to start hitting guts in a few cities and the three places you have to wonder about are Carolina, New Jersey and, gulp, Toronto.

The Canes have a real nice “don’t bet against us” vibe right now, but if things go sour they’ve got clean-slate potential in goal because the only guy signed for next year is Pyotr Kochetkov.

New Jersey’s Akira Schmid was literally atop my Conn Smythe Trophy power rankings after Round 1, so maybe they’ve found Ken Dryden. Who knows. But the Devils have loads of potential and the crease was the one spot you wondered about this year. Low and behold, they moved off starter Vitek Vanecek after two games this spring.

Okay, let’s do the Leafs fast before the sound of exploding heads takes over the Earth. Should things not go the way the Blue and White faithful hope this spring and if goaltending plays a role in that, you have to think everything is on the table for a franchise that’s not going to stop making bold plays now. Cap-wise, it’s always a struggle with the Leafs and that probably eliminates the possibility of them trading for a goalie like Hellebuyck. That said, you would have the entire summer to figure it out.