Connor Hellebuyck has been suspended without pay since mid-September for refusing to report to Winnipeg Jets training camp. The trade he asked for hasn’t materialized, the team has started the season without him and won anyway, and the money has stopped arriving. According to David Pagnotta, that combination is starting to shift his thinking.
“You’re starting to hear some conversations of maybe Connor Hellebuyck starting to think about rejoining the Jets while wanting a trade,” Pagnotta said on Hello Hockey.
He didn’t stop there, and the second half of the sentence is the problem.
“Simultaneously hearing that the guys in the room aren’t really gonna welcome him with open arms,” Pagnotta said.
Why wouldn’t the Jets want Hellebuyck back?
Pagnotta has been blunter about that elsewhere, telling the Barn Burner podcast that he doesn’t believe a lot of people would be “overly thrilled” to see the goaltender back in that dressing room, even if he’s willing to come.
The optics explain most of it. Hellebuyck went public with a request built partly on the view that Winnipeg wasn’t equipped to win, then skipped camp entirely. The Jets have since opened 3-0-1 and sit third in the Central Division, with Stuart Skinner and Clay Stevenson holding up in net and Kyle Connor scoring at a league-leading rate. Walking back in now would look a great deal like rejoining a team that had just proved it could manage without him.
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The financial side may be doing some of the work too. Pagnotta noted that the paychecks stopping is the kind of thing that starts to mount at home, and a fan-made counter has been tracking the total in real time at $38,660 a day.
Darren Dreger has reported that Winnipeg wants any eventual trade to send a message to its own dressing room, which doesn’t sit easily alongside a reunion. As The Hockey Writers noted, the Jets are in no hurry to resolve any of it while they’re winning.
Hellebuyck has five years left on his contract at an $8.5 million cap hit, and the three teams still attached to him are Carolina, Buffalo and Utah.
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