The Jets imploded, Hellebuyck was pulled again — but they can make it all right in Game 7

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ST. LOUIS — The last question Scott Arniel faced after pulling his franchise goaltender for the third straight road game was the first one on everyone’s mind.

Connor Hellebuyck is a Hart Trophy finalist. He’s the odds-on favourite to win his second straight Vezina Trophy. But he’s been pulled in three straight road playoff games. What’s going on here?

“A one-game showdown,” Arniel jumped in. “That’s what it is.”

Arniel was right, of course. This first-round series between the Winnipeg Jets and St. Louis Blues is going to Game 7 — the one-game showdown that a series with this much drama deserves.

But he wasn’t nearly done making his point.

“This isn’t about Connor (Hellebuyck.) Tonight was not about Connor. Tonight, we imploded in front of him. Now it’s a one-game showdown. It’s our goalie against their goalie … It’s our best players against their best players and it’s our grinders going against theirs. It’s specialty teams, it’s D-zone coverage. It’s what we do as a group.”

It was an impassioned speech, containing a long series of true statements, but this series is about Connor Hellebuyck now — whether Arniel wants it to be or not. How can a goaltender with such a long track record of elite play continue to get beat this badly in the playoffs?

The Blues fans are chanting “WE WANT CONNOR” AGAIN after Hellebuyck has been pulled for the 3rd time in the series 😭 pic.twitter.com/qGVOrInidt

— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) May 3, 2025

You can argue team play — and you’d be right. The Jets did implode in front of Hellebuyck in Game 6. You can argue that process and results are not always the same thing when it comes to goaltending. You’d be right there too, but Hellebuyck has given up at least one goal per game that makes little to no sense based on his ability — even in games when he’s also made brilliant saves. Hellebuyck has a great hockey mind. His multi-season track record of excellence is the product of his anticipation and angles — he’s a product of play-reading more than raw athleticism.

Hellebuyck has also given up 23 goals against in six playoff games against St. Louis after getting beat for 24 goals in five games against Colorado last season. He could have the best anticipation and read of the game in the world and still be shaken by his own results.

It certainly looks like he’s shaken. Hellebuyck made two giveaways behind his net in the first period of Game 6 — long before the Blues scored the four goals in five minutes and 23 seconds that turned Friday’s close game into a landslide St. Louis win. One can debate his choices in the crease, playing deep in his net in an effort to see around traffic. One can’t debate a missed outlet pass or a rimmed puck that caroms off of him and into the slot. The first of those two events came on the shift after Hellebuyck was beaten by St. Louis’ first shot of the game.

You can go goal by goal to dissect Winnipeg’s implosion. There are Jets breakdowns on each and every goal against, starting with Josh Morrissey’s chip to Justin Faulk — and the poorly timed line change that went with it — that queued Philip Broberg’s 4-on-2 rush and Nathan Walker finding himself all alone in the centre slot. Take it through all four goals in St. Louis’ second-period flurry and you get to Luke Schenn passing the puck through Dylan DeMelo — without a Blues player in sight — and then both defencemen gapping up far too late to stop the Blues’ free counterattack.

Hellebuyck is not Schenn. He is the franchise. He is a player whose seven-year, $8.5 million contract extension is meant to help Winnipeg compete for a Stanley Cup. The day he and Mark Scheifele signed those matching extensions was the day Winnipeg committed to winning in the short term if it could. Hellebuyck wasn’t interested in a rebuilding team. He wanted a shot at the Stanley Cup — and the fact that he wanted it in Winnipeg gave the Jets a window with which to extend veterans like Nino Niederreiter, DeMelo, Vladislav Namestnikov, Neal Pionk, and Alex Iafallo.

The Jets’ bet on Hellebuyck is sensible based on the performance we’ve come to expect, but even if it goes well, the team’s window to win exists on a finite timeline. He turns 32 later this month and it’s difficult to guarantee how a goaltender’s performance will age. As good as he’s been, it’s hard to imagine a Jets team better built than this one that won the Presidents’ Trophy. Opportunities in the NHL are fleeting; nothing is promised to anyone in any year.

So Winnipeg’s bet is not going well at the moment. None of Hellebuyck’s regular-season track record, his award recognition, or Arniel’s impassioned speech about the team imploding in front of him is a result. Hellebuyck’s bold proclamation that nobody has studied goaltending more than he has is not a result, either.

Top players on winning teams bring their best in the biggest moments. We’ve seen Hellebuyck do this — Winnipeg swept a 2021 playoff series against Edmonton in which it didn’t control the flow of play in a single game — but that feels like ages ago. Here and now in 2025, heading back to Winnipeg for Game 7, it isn’t encouraging that the Jets’ starting goaltender has given up over four goals per game over his last three playoff series.

This would be a good time to talk about Hellebuyck’s mental approach. He is a passionate mental health advocate. He has written two children’s stories on the subject — packaged cleverly in one book with a converging storyline. One of them is literally called, “Bucky Beats the Blues.”

Hellebuyck spoke to The Athletic about mental health for this story, two years ago. He shared that the leading practice for getting over tough times when he was a kid was to “tough it out.” As an adult, he can appreciate that toughing things out is a skill, but that it’s just one of many — that it’s his job to know when to tough it out and when to reach out to his mentors, like goaltending coach Wade Flaherty.

That’s what he did last year after getting pulled in Game 4 against Colorado.

“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 last May. “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 … I don’t think that’s the right way to go about playoffs anymore.”

Hellebuyck walked back those comments at training camp, saying he’d thought about it but realized he was approaching the game the right way. He was asked about his mentality again before Round 1 against St. Louis.

Had he changed his mindset to focus more on the Jets’ team game instead of putting everything on his shoulders?

“I scrapped that real fast. I’m not saying that I am putting everything on my shoulders but my goal throughout my entire career is to go out and get a shutout every single night,” he said. “That is what makes me me, that is what I feed off, and I’m going to continue to do that because I know that gives this team the best chance to win.”

It seems fair to add a caveat here: It is difficult to know which elements of a player’s mindset do or don’t contribute to their success. The parts of Hellebuyck that make him him have clearly led to an incredible hockey player. When he wins his second-straight Vezina Trophy, it will be deserved — and he deserves his votes for the Hart Trophy, too. But the contrast between Hellebuyck feeling like he needs to pursue a shutout every night and his playoff results is striking. It’s as though he came to the precipice of a great lesson when heartbroken by last year’s playoffs devastation, and then backed away from the edge.

It’s the kind of attitude that defines a player’s greatness when they win championships, but haunts them if they fail.

There is good news on that front. The Jets have not, in fact, failed. They have the opportunity to win Game 7 on Sunday at home where they’ve won three times this series. Their most recent game at Canada Life Centre was their best defensive game of the series. They limited scoring chances, trapped St. Louis in the corners, and won a far greater share of the battles in front of the net than they did in St. Louis. Their preparation was on point — multiple players credited the Jets’ pregame video sessions as a source of the win — and their execution matched it.

It is unfortunate that Hellebuyck’s results have let the air out of that story. Multiple players called Winnipeg’s Game 6 loss a case of self-inflicted wounds — and they were right — but the need for improvement in net is more striking than Winnipeg’s other errors. There were giveaways, bad coverage, and poorly timed line changes that compounded to give St. Louis great scoring chances.

“It’s self-inflicted,” Nikolaj Ehlers said.

“We just lost our game for four or five minutes,” Cole Perfetti said.

Those are exactly the kinds of stretches when a big save can swing a game. Hellebuyck has made some of those saves; Jordan Binnington has made more.

But Arniel maintained his focus on the team at large.

“We shot ourselves in the foot … We were playing a really strong game and it swung, just like Game 4. You hope you learn from it the first time.”

Arniel isn’t faultless either. While he’s had a good series in terms of responding to Jim Montgomery’s systemic adjustments, Arniel’s third pairing of Logan Stanley and Schenn is getting badly exposed — particularly on the road. Schenn has been the biggest issue: he’s been outshot 22-10 and outscored 7-0 at five-on-five during three games in St. Louis. The Jets got better results from almost every version of their third pair this season, including various combinations of Stanley, Haydn Fleury, and Colin Miller. Even the seldom-used Ville Heinola boasts better results than Schenn is right now.

Arniel was right about a lot of things, though.

Game 7 will be a battle of stars vs. stars, role players vs. role players, special teams, defensive zone coverage and all of the things Arniel said it would be. Despite Arniel’s speech, Game 7 will also be about his starting goaltender — who happens to be the single biggest bet upon which Winnipeg’s Stanley Cup window is built.

The results of one game in the first round of a playoff series don’t usually define a player’s postseason legacy. For Connor Hellebuyck, Game 7 against St. Louis will come close. Winnipeg was too good all season — with Hellebuyck as a driving force — for the Jets to let Game 7 slip away.

“I have a lot of confidence in our group,” Arniel said. “Not just Helly, I have a lot of confidence in our group. You win one hockey game, you move onto the next round.”

(Photo of Connor Hellebuyck: Dilip Vishwanat / Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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