LAS VEGAS — Connor Hellebuyck has won his second Vezina Trophy in five years, joining an elite group of goaltenders who have won the award twice.
The Winnipeg Jets star received 31 of 32 first-place votes, finishing ahead of fellow finalists Thatcher Demko and Sergei Bobrovsky.
Hellebuyck’s regular season was sterling. He led all starters in save percentage (.921), finished second in wins (37) and helped the Jets win the William Jennings Trophy as the team with the fewest goals against in the NHL. By analytical measures, Hellebuyck lapped the field: his 39 goals saved above expected (GSAx) put him 10 goals ahead of the next closest competitor.
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Hellebuyck’s dominance was an enormous part of Winnipeg’s 110-point finish in the regular season standings. Hellebuyck had a 37-19-4 record with five shutouts in 60 games. And yet he meant more to the Jets than his stats: Hellebuyck’s seven-year, $59.5 million contract extension was announced prior to the season, with Mark Scheifele signing a matching deal. The move came as a surprise to many — and was the result of an unprecedented summerlong communication process with Kevin Cheveldayoff. Hellebuyck’s contract announced Winnipeg’s continued competitiveness to the league — instead of rebuilding, Hellebuyck’s presence helped the Jets look like Cup contenders for large stretches of the season.
“It’s an honor,” Hellebuyck said. “I just know growing up my whole goal was to be the best in the world. So this is a stepping stone. It’s not something that’s given or awarded. It’s earned every single day. For me, it feels like I’m doing something right.”
What happened in the playoffs?
No celebration of Hellebuyck’s season-long excellence can be made without an acknowledgment of his playoffs. Hellebuyck allowed four or more goals in all five games Winnipeg played in the first round for an .870 save percentage. An in-depth, goal for goal accounting shows that Colorado dominated the Jets, attacking with pace, cross-seam passes, deflections and rebounds. Hellebuyck’s workload was as miserable as a five-game sample gets.
“You’re probably not going to believe when I say I was playing the best hockey of my career,” Hellebuyck said in his exit interviews. “But that’s truly how I was feeling. Not only was I playing some of my best hockey but I was in that zone where you’re not thinking, you’re just playing. And that’s what you seek after. That’s a dangerous thing in sports and to not be able to keep four goals off the board is heartbreaking. It really is heartbreaking. I mean, you’ve got to give them some kudos for what they did, but looking back I don’t know if I even saw half of the pucks that went into the net. They did a great job but for me to not be able to put my foot down even in a single game is really heartbreaking. It’s not typically how I do things.”
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Hellebuyck’s career has been marked by bold comments like this. “I liked my game” is not an uncommon thing to hear following a poor statistical performance.
There are reasons why it makes sense, though.
One thing we must understand about goaltending is that save percentage fluctuates enough — even among the best in the world — that predicting future performance based on a small sample just doesn’t work. That would be true whether you limit your sample to five games played in November or five games played in March. Still, Hellebuyck posted one of the worst goals saved above expected numbers of the last seven years — the fifth-worst GSAx in a single postseason of 165 goaltenders tracked by Evolving Hockey. Even after watching every goal against multiple times — or adding up all of Colorado’s multiple shot, multiple-seam pass flurries that Hellebuyck turned away — it’s a challenge to reconcile Hellebuyck’s words with the results.
His job is to manage his process. The numbers he’s posted over the past five years, including two thoroughly deserved Vezina trophies, imply that he’s well-equipped to do so.
Still, it seems as though the next step in Hellebuyck’s career must be to deliver another postseason performance worthy of his regular season accolades. To be clear, it’s not that he hasn’t been excellent in the playoffs; of the same 165 goalies tracked over the last seven years, Hellebuyck’s 2017-18 GSAx was 20th-best and his 2021 was 28th best. He’s delivered far more quality than his loudest playoff critics allow.
But listen to Hellebuyck talk about his goals. A second Vezina has not been a loud part of the conversation. It’s about the Stanley Cup.
And Hellebuyck knows he can’t maintain the same approach and expect different results. After getting pulled in Game 3, the hope was that he would steal a game or two — just like he’d done all season — but Hellebuyck’s emotions belied a need to change his approach.
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“When I got pulled to give me more rest, it was like a flood of emotions I had suppressed all series long and that was the realization that, I can’t do this alone,” Hellebuyck said. “And I’m not saying that I needed to do it alone. That was my mindset, I needed to do this alone. That was the realization that I need to be part of this team more than I am, and to take everything onto my shoulders — and that’s, I’m talking me personally, that’s not me talking against the team — it’s just the way my mentality is, I’m trying to put everything on my shoulders. I don’t think that’s the right way to go about playoffs anymore. I think what I need to do is just dive into a team game even more, and that will hopefully bring me peace of mind.”
Required reading
• Why playing goal in the NHL has never been harder: Analytics, talent, chaos and equipment
• How the Winnipeg Jets changed course and convinced Connor Hellebuyck and Mark Scheifele to stay
(Photo: Jerome Miron / USA Today)