Damien Cox: We know who’s going to come out on top in the Connor Hellebuyck impasse. It’s not the Jets - Toronto Star

The Jets can deal the disgruntled goaltender now or wait until they start feeling the difficulty of competing for a playoff spot.

The Winnipeg Jets are unlikely to get the return they would like for star goaltender Connor Hellebuyck.

Damien Cox is a former Star sports reporter who is a current freelance contributing columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @DamoSpin.

It’s amusing hearing folks talk about the Connor Hellebuyck situation as if today’s NHL isn’t drastically different from yesterday’s NHL.

The players are the show more than ever, and they have the critical leverage. Period. Trying to make fans and media believe that teams are in control of star players in 2026 like they were in 1986 really just insults the intelligence of anyone who understands the basic supply-and-demand dynamics of the modern NHL.

The owners have been quite happy to expand the league to 32 teams while hoarding the profits from “growing the game.” But the more the league has expanded, the more value and power impact players like Hellebuyck in Winnipeg and Dylan Larkin in Detroit enjoy, and the more teams are desperate for talent. That’s why Alex Formenton has a job again.

Winnipeg general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff can pretend all he wants that he’s in charge of the Hellebuyck situation. But Hellebuyck will win this standoff in the end. He’s the talent and plays the most important position on any team. There are few netminders, none really, who can boast of his record of three Vézina trophies, a Hart Trophy and an Olympic gold medal.

Layer on to that his $8.5-million (U.S.) average salary with five years remaining on his contract, an absolutely team-friendly deal for an athlete of this calibre at a time other players are making more than twice that amount, and you have a massive asset that a team like the Jets can’t afford to have sitting around doing nothing.

This is a team that has never won a Stanley Cup, has a small arena and potential softness in its market, but it was also first overall in the league two seasons ago. The Jets are under a ton of pressure to get back to winning. Winnipeg fans aren’t going to support a loser.

Given this, you’re going to let Hellebuyck sit and lose hockey games because of some point of principle? Or in order to punish him? Don’t think so.

Hellebuyck is going to get traded to a U.S.-based team — Buffalo makes a lot of sense — and the Jets aren’t going to get an avalanche of assets in return. They can do that deal sooner, or they can wait until they start feeling the difficulty of competing for a playoff spot in the Western Conference with Stuart Skinner between the pipes.

Right now, everybody’s losing. The Jets don’t have their player, the fans will soon be paying money to watch a team without its best player, and Hellebuyck is sitting. But it’s not hard to look at all of that and realize that the 33-year-old Hellebuyck, with close to $70 million in career earnings, can outwait the team and its fans. He could miss the season and be just as valuable next summer.

“We’re talking about moving a player that’s very important to this franchise and is a very good player in the National Hockey League,” Cheveldayoff said. “We expect a level of return that’s commensurate to that.”

Well, it’s like selling a house. You can expect anything you want. The only thing that matters is what somebody else will pay.

If the Jets had a viable goaltending option — they don’t — then they’d have more leverage. If they had a better team that might succeed without its best player, they’d have more leverage. If they had a long list of teams able to take on Hellebuyck’s contract and give up meaningful assets for both today and tomorrow, they’d have more leverage.

But none of those are true. You might argue recent seasons have proven star goalies aren’t critical to Stanley Cup success and aren’t as valuable. The Carolina Hurricanes and Brandon Bussi proved that again last spring.

But that doesn’t help the Jets make a deal here. Instead, it theoretically undercuts Hellebuyck’s value.

Will a team, or two teams, eventually step forward and make a bona fide trade suggestion? Probably. But it won’t be the home run the Jets and some of their fans are imagining.

Hellebuyck knows this, which is why he didn’t show up to camp. If he’s playing for Winnipeg, there’s no pressure on the team to move him.

This is all unfortunate for the small-market Jets, of course. We can pine for a utopian hockey world in which athletes agreed to contracts and then fulfil those deals. But we don’t live in that world. We live in a world where sometimes NHL teams pressure players with no-trade clauses to waive those privileges, and also one in which players sometimes have the hammer and choose to use it.

Winnipeg has held Hellebuyck’s rights for 14 years. Isn’t there a point in time when an accomplished athlete should be able to dictate his own future?

We can go around and around on these arguments. But when this ends, Hellebuyck will get what he wants. Cheveldayoff knows this, and will make this move sooner as opposed to later.

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Opinion articles are based on the author’s interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details

Damien Cox is a former Star sports reporter who is a current freelance contributing columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @DamoSpin.