Jets sign Kieron Walton, Connor Hellebuyck's greatness and the playoff push

By / / Sports / 9 minutes of reading


Winnipeg is pushing for a Central Division title and you want to know how the Jets shape up for the playoffs.

This month’s mailbag was full of postseason questions. Should Logan Stanley, Colin Miller or Haydn Fleury be dressed for Game 1? Whatever happened to Ville Heinola, and what’s his ceiling if all goes well for him?

What’s my assessment of Stanley’s recent performance? What would it take for Connor Hellebuyck to be considered the best American goaltender of all time?

But first: A hearty thank you to Matthew L., whose question about Kieron Walton contributed to a scoop.

Note: Submitted questions may be edited for clarity and style.

What is going on with Kieron Walton? Is he not signing his entry-level contract for a reason? Would love to see him with the Moose if/when Sudbury is eliminated. —Matthew L.

No issues here: I can report that Walton has signed a three-year entry-level contract with an AAV of $858,000. Walton’s ELC will start next season, which means Manitoba must sign him to an amateur tryout agreement so he can play in any of the four remaining Moose games. I expect that to happen.

If you missed it, here’s what I wrote last week in choosing Walton as the Jets’ prospect who had “the most promising season.”

Walton was the 187th player taken in the 2024 draft. Almost everything he’s accomplished since then makes you wonder how he lasted that long. The 6-foot-6 forward more than doubled his OHL point production this season, finishing with 92 points in 66 games after posting 43 points in his draft season. It’s rare for a forward of his size to possess such a slick offensive toolkit; Walton is doing his best to emulate the greats, watching Tage Thompson clips in his spare time and building his own highlight reel.

Walton finished his OHL playoffs with five points in four games as Sudbury was swept by Kingston. Manitoba’s next game is April 11 at home against Iowa.

At this point, what is the realistic ceiling for Ville Heinola? —Liam D.

I don’t expect Heinola to factor into Winnipeg’s stretch run or playoffs, so there are two options for the next step in the defenceman’s career.

One option is that the Jets, who haven’t dressed Heinola in a game for over a month, set him free. Heinola is under contract next season but so are Josh Morrissey, Dylan DeMelo, Colin Miller, Luke Schenn, and Logan Stanley. Dylan Samberg is one of Winnipeg’s top RFA priorities. The Jets have engaged in extension talks with Neal Pionk’s representatives, although nothing is imminent. If Pionk does re-sign with Winnipeg, Heinola will have competition with at least seven waivers-eligible defencemen at training camp, plus Elias Salomonsson. If coaching and management have largely found Heinola unworthy of game action this season, it would take a stunning run at training camp for him to win a job.

But what does “setting him free” mean? Winnipeg could trade Heinola if it finds an interested party at the draft or during the offseason. I think it’s more likely that he takes another swing at Jets camp in September, hoping for the good health that’s eluded him for two straight seasons. The Jets have lost Johnathan Kovacevic and Declan Chisholm to waivers in the past; Heinola could be next in line, depending on what plays out at camp.

What kind of ceiling should we set for Heinola? At this point, I think an NHL top-four job is probably out of reach. Heinola is 24 years old but has missed playing time during an important stage of his development. That was true in the 2021 season when a depleted Winnipeg team called Heinola up to its taxi squad and didn’t use him, true when the Jets upgraded their defence and Heinola was justifiably on the outside looking in, true when he fractured his ankle in 2023, when his ankle was infected in 2024, and again in 2025 now that he’s not getting into games. A player doesn’t go from that kind of role to top-four success without a long, multiseason stretch of play figuring things out on the third pair.

Heinola’s best-case scenario, whether in Winnipeg or elsewhere, is that somebody gives him a chance. I could see him emerging as an everyday player on a sheltered third pair — someone you don’t trust against elite competition but who makes enough puck retrievals and exit passes to help his team generate offence. I hesitate to look beyond that, regardless of Heinola’s draft pedigree or talent level.

Connor Hellebuyck is four wins away from tying the NHL record for wins in a season. How many games do you think he starts down the stretch? —Alexander H.

I think Hellebuyck gets three or four of Winnipeg’s five remaining games. The St. Louis, Dallas, and Edmonton games seem automatic. The Jets could rest him against Chicago on Saturday, Anaheim to end the season, or both. Hellebuyck sat for Laurent Brossoit to end last season, so I’m assuming the Ducks game goes to Eric Comrie now.

For the purposes of committing to a guess, I’ll say Comrie gets Chicago and Anaheim, leaving Hellebuyck short of tying the wins record. I suppose they could get excited if he wins against St. Louis and Dallas and give him the Chicago game too (and chasing the division title is a good pretense to keep the starter in net). In the end, though, the team’s playoff success matters far more than an individual record.

To my eye, the Logan Stanley we’ve seen lately looks more like a credible piece on a Cup-worthy team than at any other time in his career. What is your assessment of his current play, playoff role and high and low potential for next season? —Dan N.

You asked your question before Stanley had his puck stolen by Andrei Kuzmenko, then fell on his attempt to dig in and get back to defend the rush. I agreed with its premise when I read it: I wasn’t going to heap adulation upon Stanley for looking like he belonged, but it had seemed he was playing a cleaner brand of hockey for two or three games.

Then, this happened.

Kuzmenko made a great play while Stanley’s feet failed him.

At his best, Stanley is an adequate third-pairing defenceman in his own zone who looks for opportunities to jump into the attack from the offensive blue line. He shoots a lot of pucks — sometimes good, sometimes at the expense of better offensive opportunities — and gets a lot of pucks out of Winnipeg’s zone in the form of chip-outs that turn into fresh transition attempts by his opponents. (I’m not trying to demonize him for the chip-outs, but getting out of the zone with possession is preferred and it is not Stanley’s strength.)

Stanley is a physical presence who makes occasional big hits and is willing to drop the gloves, despite not appearing to have the natural disposition for an enforcer’s role. Add it all up and Stanley’s best, to me, is an adequate third-pairing defenceman who can win the sheltered minutes he gets.

How much will he play during the playoffs? Schenn is Winnipeg’s most likely third-pairing defenceman. Schenn is great in the centre slot, great along the boards, and pretty good at short-range passes that put his partner in good position to break out. Schenn doesn’t have the footspeed or the long-range passing skills to key breakouts on his own and makes a lot of the same “off the glass and out” plays that Stanley does. These might feel safe, but they allow opponents to reload and try out another attack. There’s a reason the Jets’ first move upon acquiring Schenn was to try him with Fleury: In theory, Fleury brings the fleet feet and puck skill to get the puck up ice on teammates’ sticks.

But Fleury did not do well enough that his role is beyond doubt. Miller is the best defenceman available to play beside Schenn, but I’m not sure that the Jets are interested in a righty-righty third pairing. Heinola is like Fleury in that he seems like an ideal stylistic fit, but the Jets have used him so infrequently that they’d be asking him to jump onto a speeding train from a standstill.

I think Stanley gets playoff minutes. I think a lot of those minutes come alongside Schenn on the third pairing and I think the Jets spend most of those shifts in their own zone. In that role, I worry about Stanley at his worst; his first step and change of direction are slow, and his positioning and reads are not flawless enough to make up for that. We haven’t seen much of the Stanley/Schenn duo so far; they’ve been outscored 1-0 in just over four minutes together.

How far away is Hellebuyck from being the best American goalie of all time? Does a third Vezina and a medal next year at the Olympics make him the best? —Chris H.

My first draft of this answer got philosophical about the difficulty of comparing goaltenders across generations. Why fault Mike Richter for playing in an era when Dominik Hasek won six of eight Vezina Trophies? Why blame Ryan Miller for playing in Buffalo and Anaheim for so many lean years, ultimately never winning a Stanley Cup? On the opposite side of that, is it fair that three-time Cup winner and all-time American wins leader Jonathan Quick automatically gets the No. 1 spot? Most metrics we use to demonstrate greatness — wins, Stanley Cups, and goals against average — are team stats.

We don’t have goals saved above expected across generations because tracking shot locations is relatively new in NHL history. Hockey Reference attempts a “goals saved above average” comparison that shows John Vanbiesbrouck as No. 1 all-time among American goalies; that’s not the definitive answer, either.

Part of me wants to attack this problem by comparing every consensus top-10 American goalie to their peers in each year of their respective careers. I think we need to consider peak quality, number of elite seasons, career accomplishments and special criteria like moments of greatness, Cups and medals.

Hellebuyck’s peak is as good as any American goalie’s. He’s put together eight seasons of elite play in a row (unless you’d like to omit 2021-22, when Winnipeg missed the playoffs). He’s sixth all-time among American goalies in wins (and only one win behind Craig Anderson in fifth). Team Canada beat Hellebuyck for gold at the World Cup of Hockey but the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs and 2026 Olympics provide new opportunities for transcendent moments.

I’d like to see Hellebuyck put together a few more elite seasons or add championship hardware or both before I’m ready to call him No. 1. Hellebuyck can to do it, but there’s a gap that needs to be closed — whether it’s the 85 regular season wins that separate Hellebuyck from Quick in top spot, or the 16 playoff wins that separate him from the Stanley Cup.

(Photo of Connor Hellebuyck: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)





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