Unmasked: Hellebuyck uses anticipation, experience to be 1 of NHL’s best

When Connor Hellebuyck was 10 or 11 years old, his dad took him to a hockey store to look at goalie equipment and was surprised to find his son in the skater section looking at sticks instead.

When he asked his son why, Connor, now the No. 1 goalie for the Winnipeg Jets, showed him a “twisted” blade that would raise a puck quickly and said he wanted to remember every type of blade, so when he saw it on the ice he’d know exactly where the puck was going.

That story, told by Chuck Hellebuyck on the Winnipeg Sports Talk Podcast on Jan. 11, didn’t come as a huge surprise to Jets goaltending coach Wade Flaherty. When it comes to the skillset that has helped Connor Hellebuyck become one of the best goalies in the NHL, the way he thinks the game and anticipates plays in real time might be what stands out the most.

“Maybe that was the start of it,” Flaherty said of the story about studying stick blades at an early age. “He's such a smart goalie. The intelligence he has is a skill he has developed over the years. This isn’t something that just showed up one day, [Hellebuyck’s] been developing this skill and his ability to read the game is something we've always talked about as one of his strengths.”

Hellebuyck, who won the Vezina Trophy as the top goalie in the NHL in 2020 and was a finalist in 2017-18 and last season, is having another Vezina-worthy season in Winnipeg. The 30-year-old workhorse is 26-11-3 with a 2.20 goals-against average and a .925 save percentage that ranks first among goalies with at least 25 appearances. Before allowing five goals against the Calgary Flames on Feb. 19, Hellebuyck had a streak of 31 games without allowing more than three goals, tying him with Martin Brodeur for the seventh longest such run in NHL history.

Hellebuyck isn’t the only goalie who uses anticipation. Every goalie relies to varying degrees on being able to connect the patterns of the game and predict what will happen next, using it to inform depth decisions and save selections.

“It's almost impossible to explain everything we're picking up on,” Hellebuyck said. “There's stick curve, the amount of flex on a stick, knee placement, shoulder placement, eyes, and there's everyone else on the ice. Are they covered? Are they not covered? Does he have time? Does he have some space and who is open? I can't tell you one is more important than the other because if I see a guy looking at the net, but his stick is showing pass, I probably know he's going to pass, but vice versa, if he's looking pass but his stick is showing at the net, he could be trying to fool me and I’ve got to find more factors to make that read.”

Sorting all that information in real time while trying to keep your eye on the puck as 10 players fly around the ice, including some trying to obscure your view, isn’t easy. Making the right read can sometimes be as simple as looking off the puck to identify before a pass is made what hand the player on the receiving end shoots with, and whether that makes a one-timer likely or not because that can determine whether a goalie has time to push across on their skates or needs to slide across on their knees, as well as the angle required for either push.

It can also mean figuring out where a player is shooting before the puck leaves their stick based on a wide range of inputs that can include everything from how they’re holding their hands, where the stick is relative to their body, whether their hips are open or closed, where they are looking, and, of course, how those blades Hellebuyck has studied since before he was a teenager are oriented.

“A lot of times I'll know where the puck is going before the guy even shoots based on where guys are on the ice, what's open and what did I give,” Hellebuyck said. “It's more experience than anything. You get a feel for ‘I've seen this shot 3,000 times and it usually goes here,’ so logistically it's probably going to go there.”

Of course, comparing how well a goalie reads the game or how big a part of their game that skill is can obviously be difficult without sitting down with all of them and asking them to break down video. But Flaherty has been a part of enough of those sessions over his 19 pro seasons, including 11 in the NHL, and another 12 as the Jets goaltending coach to know how Hellebuyck sees the game is special.

“We’ll go through it on video and I've complimented him on it, saying ‘you're one of the best goalies I've ever seen with the awareness of what's going on around you, where the players are going, the potential next play that could happen, what is the guy who has the puck on his stick his options,’” Flaherty said.

Hellebuyck’s playing partners have also seen it. There are times he’s read that a player is shooting on an odd-man rush not long after crossing the blue line.

“It's subconscious pattern recognition,” said Laurent Brossoit, who has played four of his 10 NHL seasons with Hellebuyck and the Jets. “You want to turn the brain off. He can explain it after and we talk about all the time but in the moment it's not like he’s consciously thinking 'oh, this player is about to shoot.' It's more the instinctual nature of the training and repetitions we've gone through, and he's played the most games, so his pattern recognition is obviously going to be very, very acute and it is very subconscious, so it's very fast but after you make the save it's like ‘I read that he was shooting it here, so I locked in on him.’”

As for the roots of those abilities, Brossoit already mentioned the games played: Hellebuyck has played in an NHL-high 459 games since becoming the Jets starter in 2016-17, 42 more than Andrei Vasilevskiy of the Tampa Bay Lightning in second place, and faced 14,088 shots, 1,336 more than Vasilevskiy.

Flaherty also pointed to workload, as well as the video work Hellebuyck did early in his career, but also believes that his patience on his skates, even on lateral passes and plays from sharp angles, is a factor in how well he sees the ice.

“He moves exceptionally well for a large goalie (6-foot-4, 207 pounds) and so his line of vision stays level, stays the same at almost all times,” Flaherty said. “Add in his calmness and there's not a lot of extra movement and it allows him a simple sight line to scan the ice.”

Including what kind of curve a shooter has on his blade.