Stanley Cup playoff takeaways: Connor Hellebuyck narrative not going away

The 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs continued on Sunday afternoon with four more games around the league. Let's look at some of the biggest takeaways from Sunday's action.

Playoff Connor Hellebuyck is becoming an issue for Winnipeg

Winnipeg Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck is one of the best goalies in the world given his regular season credentials.

He has won two Vezina Trophies, will probably have a third this season when the awards are announced and probably should have been an MVP at some point over the past three seasons. Or least more involved in the discussion.

He is one of the biggest reasons — if not the biggest reason — the Jets have had the success they have had. He is durable. He is productive. He is outstanding.

There is just one flaw and narrative that he has not yet been able to overcome — his playoff performance.

As good as Hellebuyck has been in recent years, his past two playoff showings have been disastrous. After Sunday's 5-1 loss to the St. Louis Blues in Game 4 of their first-round series, tying the series at two games each, he is having another disastrous series. 

Through the first four games of the series he has managed only an .810 save percentage, and since the start of the 2022-23 playoffs is only at .866. Among the 15 goalies that have appeared in at least 10 games during that stretch, his .866 save percentage is 15th (last) out of that group. 

The Jets not only rely on him to be a game-changer, they are paying him a lot of money to win them games at this time of year. They are not going to have much of a chance as long as he keeps getting outplayed by Jordan Binnington.

Frederik Andersen injury could be an issue for Carolina

The good news for the Carolina Hurricanes is they took a commanding 3-1 series lead over the New Jersey Devils thanks to a 5-2 win on Sunday. It was highlighted by an Andrei Svechnikov hat trick, and a mostly dominant performance from everybody across the roster.

The only bad news from the game was the fact starting goalie Frederik Andersen had to leave the game with an injury following a heavy collision with Devils forward Timo Meier.