Connor Hellebuyck's name landed in the wrong kind of headline Monday night, and the Winnipeg Jets are four days from puck drop.
Frank Seravalli predicted the Jets goaltender could sit out his age-33 season entirely and forfeit $7 million in the process.
Read that again. A franchise netminder, off the ice for a full year, with the regular season opening Friday against the Bruins.
Nobody should mistake a prediction for a transaction. But an insider doesn't attach a dollar figure that specific by accident, and that number is going to follow this team into opening week.
The money makes it stranger. Hellebuyck carries an $8,500,000 cap hit, and only Igor Shesterkin and Andrei Vasilevskiy carry bigger ones among NHL goaltenders.
Walking away from a year of pay is like a contractor refusing his paychecks and leaving the house half built. Somebody still has to live in it.
And the Jets aren't exactly rolling into this. They went 1-2-1 over their tuneup schedule and dropped their last two, including a 5-2 loss in Colorado last Friday.
Scott Arniel faces a crease question nobody in Winnipeg wanted
Head coach Scott Arniel now owns the question that hangs over every practice between now and opening night.
What does this crease look like without its most expensive piece? Nobody inside the organization has had to answer that out loud yet.
The schedule won't wait for clarity. Boston visits Friday, then the Jets head out for a back-to-back in Detroit and Pittsburgh on October 4 and 5.
Colorado comes to town on October 7, the same club that just put five past Winnipeg. That's a heavy early stretch for whoever ends up tending goal.
Kevin Cheveldayoff's phone just got busier, too. A general manager can't file a report like this under background noise, speculative or not.
Here's the blunt part. If this drifts anywhere close to reality, it's a nightmare for a Winnipeg team that can't find that kind of netminding on the waiver wire in October.
A goaltender is the one position where depth charts lie. You can bury a fourth-line winger in the bottom six. You can't hide a crease.
Fans in Winnipeg have learned to live with uncertainty on the roster. The man in the blue paint was supposed to be the exception.
Until Hellebuyck or the Jets address it directly, every morning skate from now to Friday gets read like a tea leaf. And nobody in that building controls how the leaves fall.
-
Would you blame Connor Hellebuyck for sitting out his age-33 season?
Also read on Markerzone.com:
Big news just broke on why John Chayka wanted Matthew Knies out of Toronto ASAP
