Autopsy of a Trade | COLUMN

The Devils shocked the hockey world Friday afternoon with the acquisition of goaltender Connor Hellebuyck from Winnipeg. Less than 24 hours later, Hellebuyck found himself at Prudential Center meeting general manager Sunny Mehta, head coach Sheldon Keefe, other coaches, staff and his new Devils teammates.

Saturday was the end of a long saga for Hellebuyck, who requested a trade over the summer after playing 11 seasons for the Jets. He held out of training camp in September and the opening three weeks of the regular season in October while awaiting the trade.

Now, he can officially close one chapter and open another.

“Sitting at home for so long was getting to me,” he admitted to the media at a welcome press conference in the afternoon. “For myself, I'm just really excited to play hockey again, and I'm joining a very skilled group. And I know that they're bringing me in for a certain specific role, and I'm really excited to try to fill that role, not only on the ice, but off the ice as well. So, when we're talking excitement here, there's nothing to not be excited about. It's a new chapter from my career, and I'm really excited for the future here.”

“Awesome trade for the organization,” Mehta said in his opening remarks of the press conference. “Got to meet with Connor just a little while ago. Just can't say enough about how excited we are.”

A lot of things had to come together for this deal to work. Below is a breakdown of the trade was made and what this means for the Devils present and future.

Process of Trade

Trades in the NHL typically take time. Sometimes days, sometimes weeks, other times months or even years for two general managers to finally pull the trigger on a deal. In the meantime, there is a lot of talking going on.

“I mean, in general, I'm in constant dialogue with the other general managers, often about just things here and there,” Mehta said. “And I would categorize this (trade) to start in that sort of category.”

The true beginning of the trade occurred weeks ago in a normal catching up conversation between Mehta and Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff. They discussed several topics, including Hellebuyck. However, things died down after, that was until a week ago and a deadline was coming for Winnipeg.

Hellebuyck held out of training camp in September but notified the Jets that he would rejoin the team for the start of the regular season. Due to his voluntary hold out while under contract, the Jets were allowed to suspend him under the CBA. That suspension was set to expire today, and he was expected to rejoin the team. With Hellebuyck’s potential return to the team looming, the Jets got serious about getting something done quickly and moving on. Friday seemed the last day to have something finalized.

Mehta and Cheveldayoff spoke Thursday night and by Friday afternoon a deal was done.

“It's interesting because then I would say, in spite of that (initial talk) being however many weeks ago, it ramped up very quickly, very significantly in the last couple days,” Mehta said. “We probably went from those talks into a finished deal in less than two days.”

Staying Ready

While Hellebuyck skipped training camp and the start of the regular season, that doesn’t mean he’s been inactive. In fact, he’s been practicing regularly in Michigan with former NHL players Robby Fabbri and Antonio Stranges.

“I've been skating pretty hard,” Hellebuyck said. “I got lucky that we've all been skating together and really kind of using the last month as a training camp, just a prolonged training camp. But we've been going hard, and it's been a lot of fun with those guys. So, get on the ice and being prepared and ready, I feel I am.”

Hellebuyck’s conditioning may be in a good spot thanks to his daily practices, but there’s certainly a difference between skating on your own and skating in an organized NHL practice, something he hasn’t done since April. That being said, at 33 years old and having 11 seasons under his belt, Hellebuyck knows how to quickly adapt.

“Getting into an NHL practice and at NHL speeds throughout a whole roster is going to be important,” Hellebuyck admitted. “But I don't think, at this point in my career, it's going to take me long. And that being said, I think, that's just one of those challenges. You adapt, and you adapt quick.”

Goalie Evaluation

After the trade for Hellebuyck was made, many people resurfaced a quote by Mehta and started to parse his words. It seemed that Mehta had downplayed goaltending in the quote and many commentators speculated that he had been playing poker and bluffing with the quote.

But in actuality, the quote sums up how he evaluates goaltending.

“The funny thing is, everything we did with this trade was exactly congruent with what I said, which is that the goaltending position is tricky to predict,” Mehta said. “There's more volatility in the results in goaltending than there are in other positions.”

Mehta sighed a paper he wrote in 2010 on goaltending on how to analyze goaltenders and how best to access their value in terms of money and percentage of the salary cap. Even though he admitted that goaltending is difficult to evaluate, that doesn’t mean there aren’t certain players that are worthy of a risk.

“If the goaltending position is tricky to predict, where do you want to bet on?” he said. “You want to bet on a person that has a large sample size of excellent results who's on a good cap hit. That's literally the three things that hit Connor. So, to me, the funny thing is that people are talking about it in terms of like, ‘Oh, well, Sunny said this.’ This is exactly congruent with that.”

Some in the media even conjectured that Mehta’s comments downplaying spending big on goaltenders was an attempt to play poker with other general managers. But Mehta acknowledged that he is extremely transparent with other GMs.

“I try to be transparent, even with other GMs,” Mehta said. “When I've been asked in the past about, ‘Well, when you're talking to other GMs or agents, is the negotiating kind of like poker?’ And my philosophy has been, it's kind of the opposite, where I'm not really trying to bluff. I'm trying to be as transparent as possible, because I just think you get the best deals done.”

Many people site Mehta’s poker career and success as a reason for the bluffing. Be he points to a different aspect of his life on how he views trade negotiations.

“I mean, to some extent, that might be more leaning on the trading experience than the poker, because it's not really bluffing,” he said. “It's more just being very upfront. In options trading, one of the key skills is you have to give a bid and an offer on every asset, and there's nothing more transparent than that. You're saying, ‘Here's what I'm willing to buy it at, and here's what I'm willing to sell it at.’ And I think of these types of negotiations as being transparent from that perspective.”

Crossing the Finish Line

Though things came together quickly – a span of two days – as stated above, the work that goes into a trade begins long before that. Everything from how much an acquired player is worth to how much the assets being traded are valued.

“That's a big credit to my staff as well. As I said from Day 1, everything's a collaborative process,” Mehta said. “And so, it's not just me. It's me maybe coming with an idea and us using our resources in terms of modeling and in terms of scouting data and all that, but then it's a huge discussion with (assistant GMs) Braden Birch and Kate Madigan, Scott Litwak, who's like a cap genius, and Matt Kane on the analytics side. And then in this particular instance too, we had Marty (Brodeur) and Leo (Luongo) in the room, and Brian McCabe and Andy Green, and I've just got a really, really good staff. So, it's credit to them.”

Mehta also admitted that anytime you get a trade across the finish line there is a rush of adrenaline.

“They're all exciting though. Every trade we make, every transaction, every signing, every contract, everything,” he said beaming. “It's why I love this job. I love it. I love the action. It is also nice for, you put the staff in particular, like they put in so much time and effort and just hours and hours of talking through every single aspect of it. So, it's nice when something comes together and you get to sort of, again, kind of see the fruits of your labor.”

While there’s a lot of excitement to go around within the organization and fanbase, perhaps no one is more excited than Hellebuyck himself.

“It means a lot, not only on the ice, but off the ice,” he said. “My family, it's a new chapter for my family. It's a new, exciting time for us. And, I'm going to have to get situated and get them here, and right now they're currently not, but they'll be here soon. And, there's so much ahead of me. It's a new challenge, and that's what's so exciting for me. I got to figure out not only day by day, but minute by minute, the new challenge that's ahead of me, and get acclimated to a group, get my game legs back under me, and I'm excited. I'm excited for this challenge, and that's what drives me.”

First Game?

Of course, now that Hellebuyck has been acquired and is in New Jersey, the question is what his timeline will look like for playing in his first game in a Devils sweater. Despite not taking part in an NHL practice in six months, Hellebuyck is eager to get back in the net.

“When I was at the rink, I was running my own skates and really focused on getting what I felt we needed, and had two good shooters that were willing to do whatever it took,” he said of staying ready with his skates in Michigan. “So, it was more just fine-tuning my game, which was fun in its own sense, because you go through a training camp and you might do some drills for shooters, you might do some drills for power play, penalty kill. You have a lot of other things going on, where I was just sitting there and really fine-tuning my game. And that was a lot of fun.

“But it was a lot of planning and managing the workload, how to go hard, when not to, what I want to do in the gym, kind of the evolution of once you start a season, the body starts breaking down, and managing all of that is very important. And I got to get very hands-on with that.”

Mehta said the decision will be made by many collaborators, including himself, Hellebuyck, the coaches and medical staff.

“We're going to wait. We're going to see,” Mehta said. “The one thing about him, which I was told before I even spoke a word to him, and it was reiterated immediately, was when I first talked to him, he was basically just like, ‘I'm ready to go. I'm already packed. I'll get in my car right now and drive there.’ And I'm just like, ‘Please don't do that.’

“So, that's what we traded for. We knew that. That attitude is unbelievable.”

The Devils currently have Jake Allen and Remi Poirier on their roster. So, they don’t necessarily have to rush anything. Though, the team travels next week and has a back-to-back scenario at Dallas and then at Colorado. If the team doesn’t play Allen in both games, it’s possible that either Hellebuyck makes his debut or Poirier plays his first career NHL game. But as Mehta said, Hellebuyck just got here. A lot still needs figured out.

“We want to be smart. And again, every decision we make is calculated and collaborative,” Mehta said. “So, he'll be in the loop on all that, but so will Stack, Chris Stackpole, our head of athlete care. We'll have Sheldon (Keefe) involved. We'll have our goaltending department involved. It'll be a unified decision. It's way too early. Like, I just met him 20 minutes ago. So, we'll figure that out.”

Win Now (And Tomorrow)

The Hellebuyck trade has not only bolstered the Devils goaltending – which was a major question mark entering the season – but has made it a strength. Any time you add a top-3 player at a position over the past decade, you’ve improved your team.

With the offensive fire power the Devils have, adding the bulwark in net only makes them all the more formidable.

“It aligns perfectly with where I'm at in my career, right? I'm here to win, and the only thing I got left on my resume is a Stanley Cup,” Hellebuyck said. “So, seeing that these guys are kind of got their vision tight on that as well, it's just going to fit perfectly.”

“I think it obviously makes us a better team, in my view, so that's why we'd make any trade,” Mehta said. “I don't know that there's a sentiment that, ‘Oh, well, now all of a sudden the Devils are contenders.’ If you think that now, I don't think you shouldn't have thought that two days ago. That's kind of what I think. I think it improves our team, of course, significantly. That's why we made the trade. But in my view, I was thrilled about the team we had coming out of training camp, and I'm still thrilled about the team.”

And though the Devils are a much stronger team than they were two days ago, that doesn’t mean Mehta and his group are finished.

“We're never done,” Mehta said with a chuckle. “We're never done. But I'm excited about the roster. But you guys know that even we talked about that in training camp. So, I'm more excited now.

“So, we'll see. But hey, listen, someone congratulated me this morning on the trade, and I said, ‘There's nothing to congratulate. We’ve got to win. Nothing's happened yet."