It’s easy to dislike a villain like Connor Hellybuyck. He’s not really a villain per se although he is if you live in Winnipeg even though half the fans there would still probably begrudgingly admit that Connor Hellybuyck gave Winnipeg, Manitoba eleven of the best years of his life.
But it’s not time yet. He has years remaining on the seven-year contract extension he signed in 2023, yet he privately asked for a trade several months before making his request public in August 2026.
And his sweet contract of his pretty much allows him to dictate where he’s going to end up next. How can the team be expected to honour their end of the bargain when he won’t honour his? And that’s why they hate him more.
So, he’s through with a certain city everybody loves to dump on, he also wants to leave the place early, and it says there in his contract that he can have a healthy say in where he ends up next.
And, to top it off, he’s already announced that no Canadian teams are on his list of preferred destinations to play hockey. Preferred? Make that don’t move me there list. He wants out, like in completely out of the country.
So now he’s basically pissed off an entire nation and, if you’re Canadian, you don’t like that much given the recent political weather patterns.
It’d be nice to see an American bridging the international gap during this tense time period. But it won’t be Connor Hellebuyck. He’s already laid out his flight plans. So, he’s the hated one, the villain, although he’s not alone.
But fans rarely blame the owners for this sort of thing. Fans can relate to players but not to billionaires. They’re mythical creatures to begin with – with mythical amounts of money – but what isn’t mythical is the fact that they’re at least trying to keep the guy in town. The rich guy or even the corporation is on their side for this one.
But it takes two to tango and the owners too, love to dance, so before we pick Hellebuyck for the villain’s role in this play let’s do a little history lesson.
Back in the 1970s there was a guy named Dave Keon. Toronto Maple Leaf. Great player and team captain.
Keon had a no-trade clause in his Maple Leafs contract, and when that agreement expired in 1975, he again sought a no-trade clause. Team owner Harold Ballard publicly vowed to never grant one but, because he’d already violated his own run, he’d basically broken the factory seal. The old curmudgeon had unwittingly set a precedent where a player could be offered some career autonomy as a contract perk.
This was revolutionary since players at the time didn’t have much mobility because of the NHL’s reserve system which allowed clubs to retain player rights even after the contracts had expired.
And with trades the powers-that-be could uproot players and families without consultation and because true unrestricted free agency didn’t exist yet, owners held incredible control over where a player could work.
Keon’s experience illustrates that imbalance perfectly. After Toronto decided it no longer wanted him, the Leafs still controlled his NHL rights and demanded prohibitive compensation from anyone wanting to sign him. He ultimately went to the WHA and reportedly chose Minnesota partly because they gave him a no-trade clause.
But, like I mentioned, this unique deal set a precedent. A precedent that evidently proved there was indeed some movement on the no-movement clause.
The broader no-movement clause that exists now is a modern creation that was formally recognized in the 2005 CBA, alongside the NHL’s first salary cap. The timing was not coincidental.
Under the original post-lockout cap system, a team could place an expensive veteran on waivers, assign him to the minors and remove much or all of his salary from its cap calculation.
A no-trade clause alone did not prevent that, but the newer no-movement clause did protect the player from being traded, waived or loaned without permission. With the freedom clauses it’s really all in how you spell it out.
This is also where the nature of the clause itself changed. The hard cap limited what teams could offer in salary however anything valuable that didn’t count against the cap became a useful negotiating tool. Offering a player an attractive exit strategy in lieu of actual money became a creative perk in contract negotiations.
Teams were saying: “We can’t – or don’t want – to offer you another $750,000 under the cap, but we can give you control over your family’s location and your career.”
This clause was valuable currency. Forfeiting essentially three quarters of a million dollars could essentially buy a player his geographical freedom.
But the clause works for the owners too. It’s another coin in their pocket even when they don’t have another coin in their pocket. Salary cap-wise that is.
It’s like both parties are cheating on their taxes. A wink wink agreement that purifies the grey area and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s an agreement and both sides should benefit from it, but it also creates its own set of problems because the clause is treated as permanent even when the contract isn’t. In other words, you – the player – can get full value for the clause in a contract you haven’t fulfilled.
But there’s also a problem with what the clause ends up being: a restrictive clause that limits a team’s personnel decisions. Of what they can get in a trade and who they can get it from.
It also limits the number of teams in contention for this player and lately that’s meant a select few teams. Mostly ones with high temperatures and low taxes. Thus, a bargaining chip meant to attract elite talent has effectively choked off most of the league from that talent.
The NHL’s owners once controlled where players could work but the players rightfully fought for their movement rights. But when ownership built a system that capped salaries, teams began offering up these rights as cap-free compensation.
But in solving their cost problem, the owners have now created a destination problem and now the same movement protection that once corrected an imbalance of power is contributing to an imbalance among teams that has thrown off the overall competitive balance of the league.
So, a player like Connor Hellebuyck turns out to be the villain in this story, which is an easy read on the situation, but not an accurate one. Without the offer there’s no clause, and without clarification and enforcement the clause becomes unstoppable.
If a player can still wield the power of the clause without fulfilling the term of the contract what’s to stop the next guy? How did that happen?
Hellebuyck may indeed be a bad guy but he’s not alone.