Jets Goalie Opens Up About Postseason Struggles

The Winnipeg Jets finished the 2024-2025 season in disappointment, losing in the second round to the Dallas Stars. After earning the President’s Trophy as the regular season’s top team, the loss in the postseason was an abject failure of a season.

While not solely on him, the loss sits in a different way with Jets starting goalie Connor Hellebuyck. Last year’s Vezina Trophy winner, and the favorite to win it again this year, fell apart in the playoffs. He was pulled three times in the opening round, but the Jets survived an all-out blitz from the St. Louis Blues to advance. He rebounded and found some success in Round Two, but by then it was too little, too late. He finished the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs with a record of 6-7 over 13 games with a 3.08 goals-against average and .866 save percentage. This was the third consecutive postseason with a GAA above 3.00 and save percentage below 86%. Speaking to NHL.com following the season, Hellebuyck opened up on the struggles and lessons learned from another bitter playoff run.

"I think what I learned the most is you can’t overtweak your game,” he said. “You just can’t abandon your game. Maybe make some tweaks here and there, but nothing huge. Nothing drastic. And you’ve just got to go out there and have fun and realize that bad bounces do happen and sometimes, there is a little bit of a luck factor in hockey."

The theme of overthinking and tweaking too much came up again and again in Hellebuyck’s comments. It's a fair conclusion to make. After all, he went 0-6 on the road in the 2025 postseason after going 47-12-3 in 62 regular season starts. According to Hellebuyck, that complete reversal of performance came when he started thinking and analyzing too greatly, and lost sight of the "it" factor that makes him an elite NHL goalie.

"If you start thinking the game and start overthinking the game, then you lose the ‘it’ factor,” he said. “Once I started having fun again … that’s when my game got good and I just started playing. That’s what I am going to live and die by."

For Hellebuyck and the Jets, any other mindset could help. This was the best regular season in the franchise’s history, combined with one of their best rosters ever, and they still couldn’t make it out of the second round. Perhaps a more care-free, living in the moment approach would benefit Hellebuyck and help lead the Jets to the next step of Stanley Cup contention.