Connor Hellebuyck finally wins The Big Game and cements himself as an all-time great goalie
You’re the best goalie of a generation, but no one cares if you aren’t for the one split second that means everything.
That was the reality for Connor Hellebuyck a year ago. He was in the midst of his third Vezina Trophy season and second in a row, months away from becoming the first netminder in a decade to win the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s MVP. He had stopped 69 of 73 shots for Team USA at the 4 Nations Face-Off, good for a .945 save percentage.
But the 74th shot, whipped from Connor McDavid in the slot, was the only one that mattered. It beat Hellebuyck to give Canada the tournament win in overtime. The inferior goaltender at the other end, Jordan Binnington, made the saves he had to make. And Hellebuyck missed out on adding a big-game moment that was glaringly absent from an otherwise Hall of Fame resume.
But Hellebuyck got his do-over one year and two days later at the gold-medal game of the 2026 Milan Olympics, once again matched up against Canada and Binnington, once again entering the game riding a borderline invincible run in the tournament, once again having to prove himself and make that save lest all the lead-up be rendered meaningless as it was at the 4 Nations.
Hellebuyck made that save Sunday. More accurately, he made it several times.
His diving, desperation stick stop on Canada defenseman Devon Toews, preserving a 1-1 tie in the third period, is now cemented as postage-stamp-tier iconic, a save so unbelievable it warrants rewatching several times over. But it’s not like Hellebuyck made that one heart-stopping rescue amid a 17-shot workload. Canada, territorially the better team in the men’s Olympic final, peppered Hellebuyck with 41 shots. Hellebuyck denied Toews in a moment that will now be replayed along with Mike Eruzione’s Miracle on Ice goal – Sunday marked the U.S.’s first men’s Olympic gold since that 1980 tournament – but Hellebuyck also survived breakaways from Connor McDavid and Macklin Celebrini. The McDavid one was partially thwarted by defenseman Brock Faber’s stick, but Hellebuyck thwarted Celebrini, the tournament’s leading goal scorer, cleanly on a breakaway to preserve the lead again after the Toews save.
At the other end of the ice, Binnington sure had his moments, too. Going into the final, he’d saved his nation’s bacon in back-to-back elimination games, first with breakaway stops on Martin Necas (regulation) and Radim Simek (overtime) to preserve a tie with Czechia before Mitch Marner’s quarterfinal winner, then to keep Canada’s deficit at one before the comeback in the semifinal vs. Finland. He made multiple monster saves Sunday, finding pucks through traffic and coming up with a massive glove stop on Quinn Hughes during the 3-on-3 overtime.
But Sunday finally marked Hellebuyck’s turn to land on the right side of history. Yes, Canada made some unforced errors, most infamously Nathan MacKinnon’s miss of a wide open net on Hellebuyck’s blocker side in the third period. But Faber’s double-doink off two posts to end the second negated that. What matters is Hellebuyck made the exact number of stops he had to make the win the highest-stakes game of his career.
And whether his Winnipeg Jets ever reach the Stanley Cup summit, we can safely call Hellebuyck an all-time great goaltender and surefire Hall of Famer.
He already had almost all the NHL hardware necessary to get there anyway, with the three Vezinas, three first-team All-Star selections, a Hart and a .917 career SV% that places him ninth all-time among goalies with at least 500 games played. And with 335 victories by 32, he’ll surely join the 400-win club, which has 15 members, and maybe the 500-win club, which is just three goalies deep.
But without Sunday’s gold-clinching performance, Hellebuyck would be missing that signature effort that people romantically associate with his name long after he retires. Not anymore. The Americans lay claim to best-on-best men’s hockey supremacy for the first time since the 1996 World Cup. It was a crucial victory against a Canada program that should be trending back up in the coming years, with youngsters like Celebrini, Matthew Schaefer, Connor Bedard and Gavin McKenna as potential foundational pieces for 2030 and 2034. The Americans really needed this tournament, they got it, and no player is more responsible for that triumph than the masked man from Commerce, Mich.
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