What We Can Learn From Hellebuyck’s First Round Exit
Image Credit: CTV News
Heading into this year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs, Connor Hellebuyck was, and still is, the Vezina Favorite for the 2023-2024 season. For those who don’t know, the Vezina Trophy is the award recognizing the league’s best goaltender throughout the regular season. Being in the top league on the planet, this makes him on paper, the best goaltender in the world right now.
His regular season play was stellar: with 60 games, he played the third most games in the league, carrying a .921 save percentage, and a 2.63 goals against average. He won almost two thirds of the games he played, finishing with 37 wins.
His playoff numbers told a different story. In the 5 games he played, he went 1-4, sporting an .870 save percentage, and a 5.23 goals against average. He lost four games in a row to be eliminated in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Clearly, the numbers are disappointing compared to his ability.
Everything you hear from the media during and following the series echoes a similar message:
“He can’t play in playoffs”
“Hellebuyck is struggling to find his game in playoffs.”
“He cannot shine when the lights are brightest.”
But what was far more interesting than the disparity in Hellebuyck’s postseason numbers compared to those of his regular season play, were the comments he made on the series during the Jets’ end of season media availability session.
He had this to say about this year’s first round.
“Ya, you know, you’re probably not going to believe what I say, I was playing the best hockey in my career. Truly, I was feeling it, not only was I playing some of my best hockey, but I was in that zone where you’re not thinking, you’re just playing. That’s what you seek after, it’s a dangerous thing in sports. To not be able to keep 4 goals off the board, it’s heartbreaking.” (Connor Baldwin, Jets Nation)
Obviously it’s a terrible feeling losing in such a fashion after being the favorite heading into a playoff series. But the results of his series against Colorado, and his response to those results, can teach us a lot about what it takes to be a darn good goaltender.
Playing Goalie is Tough… Even for the Best
This one is obvious. It’s not easy stopping pucks consistently, but there’s more to it. Sometimes it seems like the best goalies have an easy time stopping the puck because they make it look that way. But that’s not the case. They have bad games and give up bad goals like everyone else.
As goalies, we always want to be there for our team— to steal a game for them, or to come up with the big save when it’s needed most. But we’re not always going to be able to, and we have to live with that.
Even the best goaltender in the world playing at the top of his game wasn’t able to save his team from a first round elimination.
You have to be willing to accept that even though you know you have the ability to steal games for your team, you’re not always going to, and this may be one of the most frustrating things about playing goalie— knowing you have the ability to make more saves, but you don’t.
One way to help accept this as a part of the position is to remember:
You Are Part of a Team
As goalies, there is very little we have control over. Unlike any other position in sports (aside from other goalies), we don’t have much or any ability to control the game. We don’t get to possess the puck and make plays with it to make sure the other team doesn’t get it, like a quarterback in football can. We don’t get to decide when and if our team turns the puck over, or our defenseman makes a bad read, resulting in a prime scoring chance for the opposition. We are at the mercy of the game, and all we can do is simply sit there and read and react to what comes our way, whatever it may be.
When you get scored on, it’s not just you who may have made a mistake, it’s everyone on the ice. And while you know you have the ability to make a save on a great scoring chance, you just aren’t going to every time. Don’t let this frustrate you. Move on and be ready for the next chance.
The Jets played poorly defensively in front of Hellebuyck. Conveniently for the media, they left this piece out when evaluating his play. Even the best aren’t immune to being at the mercy of how their team plays in front of them. And even he wasn’t able to save them from their poor play, even though he knew he had the ability to.
We’re not saying blame your teammates. You still have to take responsibility for goals against, but remembering you are part of a team will help you retain focus moving forward to the next chance against, or the next game.
Hellebuyck said that this was something he had to learn himself.
When asked about his mindset heading into the series, he said:
That was the realization that, I can't do this alone. And I'm not saying that I needed to do it alone. That was my mindset, I needed to do this alone” (Mitchell Clinton, WinnipegJets.com)
Heading into the series against the Avs, he felt like he needed to be the one to steal a specific game, or to steal the series. This wasn’t from a point of selfishness, but rather the opposite: he wanted to be there for his team, for the guy next to him, because he felt that was his job. If he didn’t steal the game for his team, he wasn’t doing his job, and he was letting his teammates down. But he said that struggling through this difficult series taught him something about how his mindset needed to change for next season:
I’m trying to put everything on my shoulders. I don’t think that’s the right way to go about playoffs anymore.” (Mitchell Clinton, WinnipegJets.com)
What he meant by this was that even he needed to remember that he was part of a team, a unit of 6 on the ice. It wasn’t him by himself. It wasn’t his job to win a game or series by himself. Rather, it was his job to do his best to help his team win—to help the unit of 6 on the ice succeed.
When you put “everything on your shoulders”, and you feel that it has to be you to win a game or steal a series, you put an unnecessary amount of pressure on yourself. This makes it tougher to bounce back from any mistake, and can lead you to becoming mentally distracted: you’re thinking about how you let the team down, rather than being ready for the next play, and you don’t operate with your best focus when you’re doing that.
Even the best goalie in the world had to learn that.
Focus on What You Can Learn, Not the Outcome
One of the intriguing things about Helleybuyck’s postseason comments to the media was that despite his poor numbers, he felt like he was playing “the best hockey of his career”, with top level focus. How do you retain this level of focus when you are getting scored on so much throughout a series? You focus on what you can learn from every game and how you can get better, not the outcome. Throughout the series, Hellebuyck would watch video after every game to see what he could do better, and see what goals he could do something differently on (Mitchell Clinton, WinnipegJets.com) This allowed him to go into the next game mentally clear and ready to play. If you focus too much on the outcome of a past loss, this clouds your mind with negativity. You put more pressure on yourself for the next game to get a better outcome, and when you do this, you don’t respond to getting scored on as well as you should, and it drains your focus. If you focus on what you can learn, you go into next game knowing you are a better goalie than you were last game, and your mind is clear and ready to play. If something goes wrong in the next game, do the same thing and keep moving forward mentally clear. When things aren’t going your way, focusing on your negative outcomes will perpetuate them. Focus on what you can learn, so you can get to that zone of pure focus where “you’re not thinking, you’re just playing”.
Approach Every Game with Confidence
It’s easy to let the outcome of a past game or a bad goal affect your confidence, but you can’t let it. Although we don’t get to control a whole lot as goalies, we do get to control how we approach every situation. We can choose to be confident going into every game, even if we got shelled last game, or things don’t seem to be going our way lately. Even if things haven’t been going the way we’d like them to, we may as well choose confidence, because what’s the alternative, choosing to think you’re not going to play well? That is certainly not going to allow you to play your best.
The fact that Hellebuyck was still able to call his best focus forward every game despite all the turmoil shows his ability to be mentally tough and choose confidence going into every game and during every game, no matter what has happened.
He still didn’t get the result he wanted, and that’s part of the game. We may want to steal every game or make every save for our team, but we’re not going to. That’s goaltending. Even the best goalie in the world, with his top level focus wasn’t able to steal games for his team when it mattered most.
But even Hellebuyck had to learn that asking yourself to steal a game for your team or make every save on your own isn’t the proper ask, because it can drain you mentally.
The better ask is to ask yourself to be prepared to play every game, and to do your best to play your best game for your team. You’re not going to play your best every game, and that’s ok. You’re human. If you have prepared the best you can, approached the game with confidence, and done your best to make every save, then you can be mentally clear during and after the game. Once the game is over, learn what you can from it and move forward with a clear and confident mind, ready for the next challenge ahead.
