Kevin Cheveldayoff knows there’s an NHL-sized spotlight on the trade demand from all-star goalie Connor Hellebuyck, but the Winnipeg Jets general manager has no intention of rushing anything.
“This isn’t necessarily a time thing, I guess, for me. My obligation is to the Winnipeg Jets, the Winnipeg Jets players and the Winnipeg Jets fans. I just want to get this right,” Cheveldayoff said at a news conference on Thursday morning.
“We’re talking about moving a player that has been very, very important to this franchise and is a very good player. We expect that a level of return would be commensurate to that, and there has been nothing that has allowed us to say, OK, this works for both parties, for both teams.”
Hellebuyck, who still has five years left on a seven-year contract, told the team during exit interviews at the end of last season that he wanted to be moved, Cheveldayoff said.
The team kept it quiet “partly on his request” and has been working ever since to find a deal that would work, Cheveldayoff said.
Hellebuyck, 33, went public with the news near the end of August, which caught the Jets a little off guard.
Cheveldayoff didn’t get a heads-up it was happening, though he was aware the three-time Vezina-winning goalie’s camp might might do it at some point, he said.
When training camp opened Wednesday and Hellebuyck was a no-show, the team suspended him for failure to report, as per the collective bargaining agreement between the NHL and the players’ association, Cheveldayoff said.
“Unfortunately, this situation is what it is,” he said. “I have to keep a level head. I can’t let emotion come into play in any regard.”
Asked if he could see Hellebuyck rejoining the organization at some point, should a trade not come together, Cheveldayoff said “no doors are closed.”
“He’s a player that’s under contract for five years. At the end of the day, that’ll be his choice,” he said.
“Connor Hellebuyck’s a part of our family until he’s not a part of our family. I don’t have an understanding as to why he made some of the choices that he made.”
Cheveldayoff will keep talking to teams to see if a trade can be made, but moving a goalie isn’t as easy as some might think, he said.
“If you’re a team that has a bona fide No. 1 goaltender and he’s locked up and he’s yours, you’re probably not interested in this. It’s not disparaging Connor Hellebuyck or anything like that, it’s just the goalie market in general,” Cheveldayoff said.
“Things can change with one single phone call. We’ll just approach it day by day.”
At the moment there are no fines or financial consequences for Hellebuyck not showing up, said Cheveldayoff, but he wouldn’t get into details about it.
“There’s applicable sections in the standard players contract and the [collective bargaining agreement] that specifically address this,” he said.
“I don’t want to quote the full sections of the CBA without having it in front of me, because it’s an intricate thing. “
Hellebuyck was drafted by the Jets in 2012 and made his debut with the team in November 2015.
When the Jets re-signed him and Mark Scheifele to matching $8.5-million contract extensions in 2023, it was celebrated as a commitment by the team to build a squad that would consistently compete for the Stanley Cup.
The Jets promptly ended the 2023-24 season with an early playoff exit.
The following season, though, the team set an NHL record for the best start to a season by winning 14 of their first 15 games. They finished the regular season in first place but were eliminated in the second round of the playoffs.
Then in 2025-26, they missed the playoffs entirely — and Hellebuyck made his demand.
“Obviously, last season, we didn’t have a good year. There’s no doubt about that,” Cheveldayoff said, but he believes in the team and Scheifele recently said the same thing.
“Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion and their own thought process but … the thought process of this team has always been to win. That has not changed,” Cheveldayoff said.
Cheveldayoff has also heard critics say that he didn’t move soon enough to made a trade for Hellebuyck, that he could have received a higher pick in the June NHL draft, and that his window is closed now that the season is about to start and teams are committed to their players.
There are lots of assumptions on the internet around trades that could have or should have been made, he said.
“At the end of the day, we’ll just focus on the realities,” he said.
He wasn’t ready to make trades for “future assets.”
“That’s not the message that I’m sending to Kyle Connor, Mark Scheifele, Josh Morrissey, Dylan Samberg — you know, the people that are committing to this organization,” he said.
“We stumbled last year and we’re humbled by that. There’s a little bit of a chip on the shoulder on a lot of players in that room, and they want to prove something to all of you and all of the fans.”
