- Elliotte Friedman says the Jets and Connor Hellebuyck are past repairing after last season
- Buffalo, Utah and Carolina lead the market, with New Jersey giving off mixed signals
- Read below for the July 1 wrinkle that shrank Winnipeg’s return
Connor Hellebuyck is not getting talked back into a Jets sweater.
Elliotte Friedman gave the Winnipeg goalie a long block on Thursday’s episode of 32 Thoughts, and he landed on the sentence Jets fans have spent three weeks bracing for. “I think there’s a recognition now that this has to happen and is going to happen,” Friedman said.
Friedman traced the break to last winter rather than to the trade request itself.
“I think that there were some things that happened last season that were out of the Jets’ control post-Olympics that have made this situation impossible to resolve. I think the Jets were hopeful that maybe it would change, but I don’t think that’s possible at all. It was something that was out of their hands.”
Catch the full episode, with the Hellebuyck segment starting around the 18-minute mark:
Where he goes is the part nobody has nailed down. Friedman named the Buffalo Sabres, Utah Mammoth and Carolina Hurricanes as the teams still circling, and said he has gotten “very mixed messaging” on the New Jersey Devils. Some people told him the Devils were never interested. Others told him they are.
Hellebuyck is not being fussy about the map, either. Friedman addressed how restrictive the goalie’s list actually is:
“Hellebuyck’s list of where he’s willing to go is much, much wider than some of the other players who asked for trades. Obviously I don’t think he’s going to a Canadian team.”
Florida had a real bid in at one point. Friedman confirmed the Panthers made an offer, then watched the pieces scatter, with draft capital going to Ottawa in the Brady Tkachuk trade and Evan Rodrigues going to New Jersey. Florida traded for Jacob Markstrom instead and that door shut.
Another wrinkle showed up on July 1, when no-trade lists around the league reset. Friedman said some players who could have been sent to Winnipeg in a Hellebuyck package have since added the Jets to their lists. He would not confirm whether Sabres goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen is one of them, but he said he knows of players making that exact switch.
Kevin Cheveldayoff has not lowered his ask. Friedman said Winnipeg still intends to compete this season and wants NHL roster players coming back rather than futures, which is the same wall Pierre LeBrun described earlier this week when he wrote that nothing on the table represents fair value for the Jets.
Winnipeg opens training camp on Sept. 17. Friedman’s read is that the Hellebuyck trade gets finished, not that it gets patched up.
