Josh Morrissey Hopes Connor Hellebuyck Stays With Jets
Depending on your perspective, the Jets could take off or keep the plane off the runway for repairs.
Why could they take off? This stems from not being far removed from a Presidents’ Trophy-winning season in 2024-25. However, a 2025-26 season finishing 7th in the Central Division carries validity for the other side of the argument; it sounded the sirens, especially after the rumors revolving around Connor Hellebuyck and his willingness to move his no-trade clause to leave the Jets. According to Murat Ates of The Athletic, Josh Morrissey hopes that does not happen.
“You can’t believe everything you might see or hear out there,” Morrissey said via the article. “At the end of the day, I hope Helle is back playing for us. He’s the best goalie in the world. But what happens, doesn’t happen, whatever, that’s with him and his agent and the organization. It’s something that’s part of the game and part of the business.”
The now 33-year-old is the third-highest-paid No. 1 goalie in the NHL, which isn’t without reason. The three-time Vezina trophy winner as the league’s best netminder, and 2024-25 league MVP, makes $8.5MM per season and will earn $59.5MM by the time he’s 38 years old in 2031.
He posted a 2.86 goals against average and a 0.895 save percentage, the SV% chalking up to the worst of his 11-year NHL career. After three consecutive seasons of 30+ goals saved above expected, he ended 2025-26 stopping -0.3, his worst in that category since 2016-17. All of this culminated in a 23-23-11 record in 57 games started for the Jets.
At the Jets’ end-of-season press conference, Hellebuyck had expressed that the Cup was the only milestone missing from his resume, which might not be attainable in Winnipeg, based on last season’s lulls. Morrissey, at age 33 as well, sees the clock ticking. The defenseman has remained as a 50-60 point offensive producer on the blueline, and yet, he only has two more years before he’ll have to renegotiate a contract.
So can the Jets compete for a Cup within that window? A lot would have to fall their way, but there are mainstay comforting guarantees in the current lineup. Firstly, if Hellebuyck remains, that works in their favor. Mark Scheifele’s 103 points were the fifth-most in the entire NHL. Kyle Connor‘s 92 points add to Winnipeg’s top-heavy talent up front.
14 of 17 players who dressed for 60+ games in 2024-25 remain with the Jets today (excluding Nikolaj Ehlers, Logan Stanley, and Mason Appleton), so the experience is there, but how will the output and production fare? With no Ehlers, who won a Cup with Carolina this past season, clearly hurt the Jets fuel more than they were expecting. They were one of the NHL’s top-scoring teams in 2024-25 (tying for the lead in the West with Dallas) and yet saw their output by more than half a goal per game this season.
They’ll need steps taken forward from Cole Perfetti, who the Jets just extended, as well as Dylan Samberg, and younger unproven players like Brad Lambert, and a hypothetical standout rookie season from Viggo Björck, all are question marks from the Jets roster that could become exclamation points. Bringing in Mario Ferraro to the back-end for grit and Stuart Skinner, who, positively speaking, knows what it takes to get to the big dance, are also veteran players to welcome in.
In a year where Hellebuyck won a gold medal with the USA at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, a triumph that saw a dropoff from being a part of the league’s best team for the President’s Trophy just a year ago, and was three wins away from a Stanley Cup Final appearance in 2018, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he’d want to be back in that window. The question begs: Does he share Morrissey’s sentiments, or does he see a better opportunity elsewhere?