Connor Hellebuyck, Chris Pronger and the Truth About Player

Connor Hellebuyck and Chris Pronger might seem like very different cases. One is a current Winnipeg Jets goaltender asking for a trade after 11 years with the organization. The other is a former Edmonton Oilers star looking back on a trade request that happened almost two decades ago. Their circumstances aren't the same, and their stories certainly aren't the same.

But they do raise the same uncomfortable question: Who gets to decide when a hockey relationship is over?

NHL teams make this decision over and over again, and few fans seem to mind.

That question is easier to answer when the team is making the decision. When an NHL team decides a player no longer fits, fans might be disappointed, but most people understand the logic. The team has a contract. It has a roster to manage. It has a responsibility to improve the club. If trading a player helps the organization win, that's hockey.

But what happens when the player makes the same calculation?

Hellebuyck apparently believes his future is better somewhere else. Pronger made that decision in Edmonton years ago. In both cases, the player decided he wanted his career to go in a different direction.

And that's where fans can have a difficult time. Fans aren't wrong to be hurt. That's part of being a fan. Hellebuyck has been a huge part of Winnipeg's identity for more than a decade. Pronger was a major reason Edmonton reached the Stanley Cup Final in 2006. When someone who has become part of your team’s emotional history decides he wants out, it feels personal.

When a player wants to leave, that decision might not be personal at all.

That's the strange thing about professional sports. We sometimes talk about players as though they have a responsibility to remain loyal to the organization while simultaneously accepting that the organization has every right to make decisions based on its own interests.

Perhaps that's the part of player empowerment that fans don't like. It works both ways. A team can say, We think moving you is best for us. A player can say, I think moving me is best for me.

Those two statements aren't necessarily contradictory. They're actually the same principle applied from opposite sides.

Pronger isn’t the perfect messenger for this argument, but that doesn’t make the argument wrong.

Pronger's particular history makes him a complicated messenger for this argument. His decision in Edmonton remains painful for many Oilers fans, and some of the circumstances surrounding it make the story even more complicated. But that doesn't necessarily make his larger point wrong.

Maybe Hellebuyck isn't betraying Winnipeg. Maybe Pronger wasn't betraying Edmonton. Maybe sometimes a player simply decides that his future matters to him as much as the team's future matters to the team.

The real test of player empowerment.

And perhaps the real test of player empowerment isn't whether fans support it when their team benefits. It's whether they can accept it when their favourite player is the one exercising it.

That’s what makes it tough, but also so very human.