from Mark Spector of Sportsnet,

“I really don’t like that question.”

Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck was taking on the media on a night when his team lost 4-3. He had been undoubtedly the second-best goalie in the game, and wasn’t going to go 0-2 against a bunch of guys with digital recorders in their hands.

The whiff of the game-winning goal, however, still lingered after a 4-3 loss. It was a semi-distant wrist shot from Ryan O’Reilly that had eluded Hellebuyck to the far side, eliciting the old hockey cliché from Paul Maurice:

“Yeah, he’s going to want that back,” winced the Jets coach.

Earlier, in fact, a scribe had asked Hellebuyck if there were “one or two” goals that he may have “wanted back.” Combative to the end — which we like about Hellebuyck — the goalie fired back.

“I would like every single goal I ever let in back,” he reasoned. “That’s kind of a loaded question.”

The Jets are down 0-2 and heading out on the road to St. Louis, their playoff lives hanging by a thread, and suddenly the goalie is a giving a master class in journalism instead of stopping pucks. Nice.

continued

Game highlights are below.