Historical precedence of Connor Hellebuyck

[jigglysquishy]

Hellebuyck has been arguably the best regular season goalie post Brodeur. 3 Vezinas. 2 more top 3 finishes. By Vezina Share, he is behind only Hasek, Brodeur, and Roy since 1982.

And in the playoffs he's been terrible. Three years now he's been the weak link on the Jets. This year in particular he's been awful.

We've had guys who were great in the regular season but only okay to good in the playoffs (Dionne, Thornton, Stamkos). We've had guys who were much better in the playoffs than regular season (Richard, Claude Lemieux). But I can't think of any player where the dichotomy is so wide.

 

[WarriorofTime]

Sergei Bobrovsky up until two years ago then he wasn’t.

 

[Buffalowing1988]

I don't like this conversation, but not because OP is wrong to ask it. I just think that the failure is on his team as much as it is on him in a lot of these situations. If he loses G7, go at it. But let's get there first.

The Jets were repeatedly punked in front of the net tonight and STL seems to have realized that a shaky goalie is only going to get worse if his defense can't keep people out of his crease.

His regular season peaks are hard to ignore in this juxtaposition, but plenty of the best goalies ever had some rough playoff patches. Glenn Hall, Lundqvist, Esposito, obviously Bob.

 

[bobholly39]

Hellebuyck has been arguably the best regular season goalie post Brodeur. 3 Vezinas. 2 more top 3 finishes. By Vezina Share, he is behind only Hasek, Brodeur, and Roy since 1982.

And in the playoffs he's been terrible. Three years now he's been the weak link on the Jets. This year in particular he's been awful.

We've had guys who were great in the regular season but only okay to good in the playoffs (Dionne, Thornton, Stamkos). We've had guys who were much better in the playoffs than regular season (Richard, Claude Lemieux). But I can't think of any player where the dichotomy is so wide.

I definitely don't think he's been the best regular season goalie since post Brodeur - but fine, he's maybe a ~top 5 candidate or so since.

But yes - it's pretty terrible.

Hellebuyck won his first Vezina trophy in 2020. Since 2020, there are 28 goalies who have played a minimum of 15 playoff games:

Hellebuyck - 3.47 GAA. Dead last. Second to last is a ways up at 3.30 GAA.
Hellebuyck - 890 sv%. Third from last (Ullmark at 885, Skinner at 889).

It's pathetic because he isn't just playing bad or poor - he's literally been the worst goalie in the league, 5 years running, come playoff time.

Thornton, Dionne, Stamkos....all have disappointed. They go from star fowards to....only average forwards in playoffs. They don't go down to "worst forward in league" level.

 

[GlitchMarner]

I haven't watched a ton of that series, but he seemed extremely shaky last night. When the Blues were pouring in goals in the second period, the Jets' net felt huge. He seemed to have no confidence or poise.

I don't know how a player can keep doing total 180s like he has.

 

[JackSlater]

It is a strange thing. I really like Hellebuyck's game generally. A goaltender who quietly and competently goes about his business without much in-game dramatics, pretty consistently. The problem is that the competence dips significantly in the playoffs. Winnipeg in general seems to play worse though, but not enough to totally explain it. On some level the deep in the crease playing style seems particularly susceptible to weak goals in the playoffs.

I don't think that Hellebuyck is the best goaltender since Brodeur, that's likely Price, but he's in contention and after this year he'll clearly have the best trophy case. It's going to look awkward when he is given the Hart in a month or so and people mainly talk about how they would not want him for the playoffs. Him getting the Hart, which seems likely based on media disscussion in my opinion, is a weird outlier anyway given that he plays for a strong team, but that's beside the point.

Maybe there are whiffs of Glenn Hall going on with Hellebuyck. Hall has all of those first team all star selections, but his playoffs were not as good and in the end people from the time pretty consistently preferred Sawchuk and Plante.

 

[Plural]

The idea of a "system goalie" is bit of a mystery to me. But Hellebuyck strikes me as one. He plays great in games where his team get's to execute their game plan. When it's tougher time, he struggles. Kimmo Timonen was talking about Hellebuyck in his recent podcast and one of the glaring differences (by his words) he saw in truly all-time greats was that in playoffs Hellebuyck gets vocally and visibly annoyed by his team when he can't see the puck. Timonen said (liberal quote) "It's the playoffs, nobody can see. The greats manage to figure it out."

So, he's technically good, reaction speed is great. But it's video game environment. Can't adapt when things get tougher. Not the first star-player to experience this, but maybe the first goalie ever who had this big of a drop.

 

[Dr John Carlson]

A huge part of the problem is that St. Louis is clearly aiming to get as much traffic as possible in front of him. So many goals against are coming off of deflections and screens, many by his own defensemen.

That said, he's been good for one or two softies a game this series apart from game 2. I don't think he's been nearly as bad as the stats suggest, but he hasn't been good either.

 

[WarriorofTime]

It's pathetic because he isn't just playing bad or poor - he's literally been the worst goalie in the league, 5 years running, come playoff time.

Thornton, Dionne, Stamkos....all have disappointed. They go from star fowards to....only average forwards in playoffs. They don't go down to "worst forward in league" level.

Aren't goalies, by their nature, just a lot more likely to have those "worst in the league" type stretches when things are going bad (7uongo)? Worst skater ever ever probably just gets demoted down the lineup to not really have a big effect on things. Reputation prior to series will give more benefit of the doubt for short sample scoring slumps and such.

 

[MadArcand]

I'm reserving any real judgement after game 7, but Holy Suck, it doesn't look good. This is beyond Jim Carey or Trevor Kidd, more like worst of Vernon?

 

[sr edler]

Winnipeg screamed paper tiger all season long. Someone like Ehlers doesn't have a good playoff record either. It was a bit funny when I saw some Jets promo the other day of Ehlers coming back this Blues series from injury, it was something like "Look who's back!" with Ehlers' determined face looking right at me, and I was thinking for myself "yeah, if he plays like he does for Denmark in Olympic qualifiers, then maaaaybe......"

As for Hellebuyck, he's always made corny public statements, I remember vividly how he proclaimed the Jets as a future dynasty when they still had Laine and Byfuglien (and probably Evander Kane too) on the roster.

 

[WarriorofTime]

As for Hellebuyck, he's always made corny public statements, I remember vividly how he proclaimed the Jets as a future dynasty when they still had Laine and Byfuglien (and probably Evander Kane too) on the roster.

Just being a guy willing to commit long term to a small, “uncool” market like Winnipeg makes him a good dude in my eyes.

 

[MadLuke]

Aren't goalies, by their nature, just a lot more likely to have those "worst in the league" type stretches

And vice versa, Halack (long list) of goaltender being possible the "best" player in the league for a stretch (best as in the most impact into their team success).... could be more often a goaltender than others... mistake are quite costly and in a very visible way, same for their absence of mistake.

2 offensive forward that blunder a 2:1 is a giant mistake, arguably the same as the defenseman that create a big scoring chance or the goaltender doing so, but we mentally judge them quite differently.

 

[Muzik Machine]

I was going to post something similar but I figured I'd add on to this discussion.

In the microcosm of a series as opposed to a player's career, I'm wondering about the similarities of Hellebuyck and Jets/Blues verses the 2011 SCF with Luongo and the Canucks/Bruins, especially in terms of the Jets (and Canucks) winning closer games at home and then getting blown out on the road.

Through the first 6 games, the goal differential is as follows:

• Games 1, 2, and 5 were +5 Wpg (2011: +3 Van)
• Games 3, 4, and 6 were +12 StL (2011: +14 Bos)

Going into game 7, the series goal differential is +7 StL and in 2011 was +11 Bos - we know how game 7 went in 2011.

Admittedly I haven't been watching the games, so I can't speak into the nuances beyond the box score (i.e. goalie vs. team play), but on paper this series seems to have echos of the past.

 

[reckoning]

The two seasons Ed Belfour won the Vezina with Chicago ('91 and '93), he looked unimpressive in their first round upset losses.

 

[Staniowski]

I haven't seen any of the Winnipeg - St. Louis series, but I very much doubt that Hellebucyk is playing any different than he did in the regular season. Sometimes it looks different, but it's almost always explained by different circumstances and conditions - better defense from one or both teams, and a corresponding reaction, etc.

A lot of people used to say Mats Sundin played better on Team Sweden than he did for the Leafs....he didn't; he played the same. It was just different conditions, so it looked a bit different.