Jets’ playoff failure ‘heartbreaking’: Hellebuyck

Thirty-six hours after a shockingly one-sided NHL playoff series came to an end, Winnipeg Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck offered a jaw-dropper of his own Thursday morning.

“You’re probably not going to believe when I say, I was playing the best hockey of my career,” the club’s most important player said at the start of his year-end media availability two days after the Jets fell 6-3 to the Colorado Avalanche to bow out of the playoffs in five games.

Yes, that would be the same Hellebuyck who got torched for 24 goals over 14 periods of hockey against the Avs (backup Laurent Brossoit mopped up in the third period of Game 4). The Jets’ starter finished with an embarrassing 5.01 goals-against-average, .870 save percentage and a 1-4 record.

Is he serious?

“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,” Hellebuyck continued.

“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.”

No, it’s not, with Hellebuyck the backbone of a team that at one point this year went an incredible 34 straight games giving up three goals or less — the second-longest streak in modern NHL history. In that sense, you can put him at the top of the list of those around here wondering the heck just happened.

How did the NHL’s stingiest squad in the regular season (199 goals against to win the Jennings Trophy), led by the guy who is likely a lock to win his second Vezina Trophy, just become the first team in NHL history to give up at least five goals in five consecutive games to begin playoff series? How did the Jets, with a 52-24-6 record (including 3-0-0 against Colorado), suddenly have no answers for an opponent that finished behind them in the standings?

“In my head, I can think of a couple of their goals that were exactly the same game-in and game-out. So, I guess we just didn’t make the right adjustment and didn’t jump on those fixes that we needed to make,” said Hellebuyck, whose seven-year, US$59.5 million contract extension kicks in next season.

“You’re probably not going to believe when I say, I was playing the best hockey of my career.”–Connor Hellebuyck

Adam Lowry, who sat beside Hellebuyck at the podium, believes his group let the franchise netminder down.

“We didn’t do a good enough job protecting the middle, slowing down their rush, kind of slowing them down and getting them away from what makes them successful,” said the Jets captain.

“The chances we gave up, we gave up so many grade-As, the power play outnumbered opportunities at the net, things like that. Hearing Helle say what he did, there’s not really much he can do on tips. You’ve got another guy that can swallow up a rebound, puck screen redirection six feet away, right? So I think frustration (that) we couldn’t have done more in front of him to slow down those things.”

Hellebuyck said getting the hook after two periods in Game 4 — something that has never happened in his playoff career — was humbling. It also led to a light going on, one he believes will serve him well.

“From the second I woke up I was ready to steal a game. And this kind of was my mindset going into every single game, but especially in Game 4. And when I got pulled, 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,” he 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.”

Jets coach Rick Bowness wasn’t surprised by Hellebuyck’s confidence or candor or the obvious frustration he felt at how this series played out, which quickly started swirling down the drain.

“We’ve taken pride all year in our team game, that’s what carried us. And (Hellebuyck) was a big part of that team game. It’s an example of a player putting a lot of undue pressure on himself,” said Bowness.

Since I’ve got here, we’re always making sure we’re trying to improve the defensive play in front of him to help him out, which we have done over the two years. We have done that. What matters now is we didn’t do it when it counts most, and that’s when he’s putting a lot of pressure on himself.”

No doubt there will be some who take Hellebuyck’s comments as lacking self-reflection and, perhaps, throwing teammates under the bus. As he continued to speak, it became clear Hellebuyck wasn’t absolving himself of blame.

“I feel like a lot of those games I was stealing some goals. That being said, I’m not going to go and tell you I don’t want to be better. I absolutely need to be better if we’re going to win — I can’t be giving up that many goals,” he said.

He also believes there can be a silver lining to what is, for now, a very dark time.

“I’d like to think this is hopefully the last learning curve that we’re going to go through, but… I mean, we were so good. You can’t imagine you’d be good for 82 games and then you just don’t… you’re just not there, you’re not the same team,” said Hellebuyck.

“I hope we’re going to learn that this is the small difference between playoffs and the regular season. This is why the hockey gets so exciting, it gets so quick. Your details have to be so fine-tuned by the time you make playoffs that there’s no room for error, there’s no room to find your game. I’m hoping that, this series kind of opened our eyes to the last piece of the puzzle to go on a long run.”

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

X: @mikemcintyrewpg