Hellebuyck faces tough save with Winnipeggers after fool’s gold-plated day with Trump

Connor Hellebuyck has given the people of Winnipeg all the reasons in the world to love him, both as an athlete and a human being.

The star goaltender for the Winnipeg Jets has been a stoic presence in Winnipeg, leading the Jets to the very precipice of glory while also establishing himself as arguably the best netminder in the league. At the same time, he’s been a constant presence in Jets charitable activities, including campaigns to promote mental health and female sports.

And in 2023, at the age of 30, Hellebuyck signed a seven-year extension with the Jets, which may well take him to the end of his National Hockey League career.

At a time when a lot of hockey players shun smaller markets and change teams as often as they change their socks, Hellebuyck is a true role model.

And that’s what makes the events of this week so utterly disheartening.

On Tuesday, the American-born Hellebuyck — the consensus MVP from Sunday’s gold-medal-winning Olympic final against Canada — appeared with team members first in the Oval Office, and then at the U.S. Capitol for the State of the Union address as a guest of President Donald Trump.

During his address, Trump announced he was awarding Hellebuyck the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour that a president can bestow.

In most Olympic years, and with most presidents delivering most State of the Union addresses, none of this would be particularly controversial.

However, this is not just any Olympic year, this is not just any president and the speech Trump delivered Tuesday night was leagues away from being a normal State of the Union address.

The annual event gives the president an opportunity to speak directly to both houses of Congress to update them on the economy and major initiatives. Although not expressly non-partisan, most pre-Trump State of the Union addresses stopped short of overt attacks on political opponents.

Hyper-partisanship

That was not the case Tuesday evening; Trump delivered an orgy of hyper-partisanship and falsehoods about the economy, immigration, elections and his destructive tariff war with the rest of the world.

Trump celebrated his divisive campaign to round up illegal immigrants in which multiple major U.S. cities have been swarmed by masked, heavily armed federal agents who have indiscriminately arrested legal citizens and triggered four fatal shootings.

The president also unleashed a new torrent of completely disproven claims of voter fraud that Republicans are using to introduce new voter ID laws that could prevent millions of people from casting ballots in the upcoming November mid-term elections.

By accepting the president’s invitation, Hellebuyck and most of his American teammates cemented themselves as characters in the narrative of a political leader with tyrannical aspirations who has spent the last year dismantling one of the world’s oldest democracies.

There are some who will argue the players were not endorsing Trump simply by appearing in Washington. Those apologists, and the Team U.S.A. players themselves, should take some time to study the history of authoritarian leaders and the important role that the stars of sports, arts and culture have played in legitimizing illegitimate regimes.

De facto endorsement

We can be confident that some, maybe even most, of the players did not stop to think about Trump’s war on democracy when they accepted his invitation. However, at some point, even the most apolitical athletes have to consider whether the company they keep with politicians is a de facto endorsement of their politics.

It should be noted that five American players chose not to accept the president’s invitation to visit the White House and attend the State of the Union address, including fellow Winnipeg Jet Kyle Connor. And the U.S. women’s hockey team, also gold-medal winners, declined an invitation to join the men’s team at the Capitol.

Others who made the trip to Washington made predictable rationalizations for their decision.

Team U.S.A. captain Auston Matthews, also captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs, was asked in a news conference if he thought the visit to Washington was ill-advised based on Trump’s policies. He mumbled something about not wanting to “get political,” which is, of course, the standard deflection when athletes are accused of sport-washing.

The more pointed question, which none of the sports reporters chose to ask, was whether he feared for the safety of his mother, Ema, a Mexican immigrant.

There are few details about whether Ema Matthews is a permanent resident or a full citizen, but hundreds of legal American residents have been caught up in raids by Immigration and Customs and Enforcement officers. Some have been sent to detention camps, and a number have actually been illegally deported.

Nobody dared ask Matthews about Trump’s indiscriminate war on immigrants, but he’d be a fool not to be concerned for his mother and her extended family.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Hellebuyck has yet to make a statement on the backlash from his trip to Washington. For now, Winnipeggers and Jets fans will have to live with the fact that our relationship with Hellebuyck has become paradoxical.

Most of us will continue loving him for the player and human being he is. At the same time, many of us will be profoundly disappointed about what he has done.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca

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Dan Lett
Columnist

Dan Lett is a columnist for the Free Press, providing opinion and commentary on politics in Winnipeg and beyond. Born and raised in Toronto, Dan joined the Free Press in 1986.  Read more about Dan.

Dan’s columns are built on facts and reactions, but offer his personal views through arguments and analysis. The Free Press’ editing team reviews Dan’s columns before they are posted online or published in print — part of the our tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.