Connor Hellebuyck's Hart Trophy Win Was a No-Brainer Despite His Playoff Struggles

Winnipeg Jets star Connor Hellebuyck delivered one of the most dominant regular seasons by a goaltender in recent NHL history, and now he's got two trophies to show for it.

For the doubters, though, it still might not be enough. His postseason struggles, critiqued and used as a stick to beat him with, will be the black cloud over his head despite his awards.

However, that's a load of nonsense.

Hellebuyck won the most coveted individual award in the NHL, the Hart Trophy, decided by the Professional Hockey Writers Association for the most valuable player to his team. He becomes only the fourth goalie in the expansion era to win the award and the third American to claim the honor.

The 32-year-old also won the Vezina Trophy for best goalie in the league as voted on by NHL general managers, beating out Los Angeles' Darcy Kuemper and Tampa Bay's Andrei Vasilevskiy.

It's Hellebuyck's second consecutive and third overall Vezina win, making him the fourth goaltender to capture the award at least three times in its current format (since 1981-82).

And yet, despite the success in the regular season and the honors of a historic campaign, all the critics will talk about are his mediocre postseason performances.

When we talk about Hellebuyck, his playoff shortcomings loom over the conversation. This postseason was no different, as a few out-of-control games from the typically sturdy netminder contributed to a second-round exit for the best team in the regular season.

But as the Oilers and Panthers showed us by dominating each opponent on the way to the Cup Final, you need more than a goaltender—even a Hart Trophy-winning goaltender—to win a Cup these days.

You need a complete team, and although Hellebuyck had obvious struggles in multiple games that contributed to losses, he needs a more complete playoff-caliber roster around him when the postseason rolls around.

And if you look at the numbers, it's awe-inspiring to see how much he carried Winnipeg this season, just to even get to where it ended up.

Hellebuyck was at the heart of a historic regular season for the Jets in which they won the Presidents' Trophy, with the netminder contributing 47 wins in 63 starts to the team's 56-win season.

Forty-seven wins were the most by any Jets goalie in a season, and Hellebuyck was only one victory away from tying Braden Holtby and Martin Brodeur's NHL record of 48 wins, all while playing fewer games.

Hellebuyck is just the fifth goaltender in NHL history—the first since Carey Price in 2014-15—to capture the Hart and Vezina in the same year. Only seven different goalies have won the Hart at all, and only eight times (Dominik Hasek did it twice).

He was miles ahead of any other goaltender in the 2024-25 regular season, with a 2.00 goals-against-average, a .925 save percentage and eight shutouts. He won his second consecutive William Jennings Trophy as the goaltender (min. 25 GP) on the team allowing the fewest regular-season goals and he has also been named a Vezina Trophy finalist for the fifth time in the last eight seasons.

According to MoneyPuck.com, Hellebuyck led all NHL goaltenders with 39.6 goals saved above expected, more than 10 higher than the rest of the pack.

To win the Hart Trophy, Hellebuyck couldn't just be better than his positional peers; he had to provide more to his team than any player in any position in the league.

He beat out Tampa Bay's Nikita Kucherov, the Art Ross Trophy winner who led all scorers with 122 points this season, and Leon Draisaitl, the Rocket Richard Trophy recipient for scoring a league-high 52 goals.

Those two were crucial in their teams' success, but when you think about the defense-first machine the Jets were as the winningest team in the 2024-25 regular season, Hellebuyck for Hart was a no-brainer.

No individual player was more important to their team's success, nobody better embodied the brand of hockey that makes theur team successful and no team in the NHL was more successful in the regular season than the Jets.

The Lightning and the Oilers would have struggled without Kucherov and Draisaitl, respectively, but the Jets would have been nowhere near their historic season of winning without Hellebuyck. He is the textbook example of "your goalie is the most important player on the ice," and he deserves all of the recognition for what he was able to do this regular season.

It almost makes his regular-season performance more impressive when you consider how the whole team got exposed in weak games throughout the playoffs. He was able to conceal a lot, especially defensively, about the team around him in the regular season, and the Hart Trophy is a regular-season award.

While we would like to see Hellebuyck figure it out in a postseason and translate his game, his playoff struggles don't take away from all he was able to accomplish this past regular season.