Scott Arniel wanted Tuesday night against the New Jersey Devils to be the end of it.

The Winnipeg Jets coach was asked Monday about the Devils’ decision to keep Connor Hellebuyck out of the net at Canada Life Centre. Jake Allen is expected to start, and Hellebuyck will back up.

“To me, it goes back to the ownership, it goes back to the fans, it goes back to the core guys that have been with ‘Helly’ from the very beginning, that he kind of left on,” Arniel told reporters. “That’s the part for me that is hard. He just gave up on us, and it would be nice to be finally done with this and all it does is drags it out.”

Later he added: “I can feel the frustration of the fans. I can feel the frustration just in the fact that we wanted to get this put to bed.”

Arniel’s frustration is real, and his players have lived with this story since the summer. It still isn’t the Devils’ job to give Winnipeg an ending.

The trade already settled things with Winnipeg

Hellebuyck asked out after last season, didn’t report to training camp and was suspended by the Jets on Sept. 16. On Oct. 23, Winnipeg traded him to New Jersey for Dawson Mercer, Nico Daws, Nick Bjugstad and Alexander Command, the Devils’ 12th overall pick in the 2026 draft, along with a 2029 second-round pick and a 2027 seventh.

The two clubs negotiated that deal and both signed off on it. Nothing in it promised Jets fans a night to tell Hellebuyck what they think of him.

The goalie wanted to give them that night anyway. General manager Sunny Mehta‘s statement Sunday said “Connor Hellebuyck was adamant that he felt a duty to play on Tuesday in Winnipeg.” Mehta said the team overruled him because, “in our estimation, playing in this game would potentially give us a reduction in our expected win probability.” So the decision came from the Devils’ front office, not from Hellebuyck.

Arniel didn’t argue otherwise. Asked whether Hellebuyck owed it to his old teammates and the fans to play, he said, “I’m not going to speak on what Helly owes.” He also said the Jets “still have to beat the New Jersey Devils, and that’s the single biggest thing.”

Tuesday’s two points don’t touch the Metro race

Going into Tuesday, the Devils are 13-5-0 with 26 points, second in the Metropolitan Division and four points behind the Carolina Hurricanes, who have played one more game. The Washington Capitals are fourth at 9-6-0 with 18 points and three games in hand. Both the Devils and the Capitals have eight regulation wins, the first tiebreaker.

Winnipeg is 7-8-3 with 17 points, 11th in the Western Conference.

A loss in Winnipeg would cost the Devils two points of their own, and nobody in that room wants it. But no team the Devils are chasing, or being chased by, gains anything from a Jets win. That isn’t true on Thursday at Prudential Center or Saturday in Washington, where head coach Sheldon Keefe said the Devils want Hellebuyck for both games.

Hellebuyck joined without a training camp, played three games in six nights through Sunday and looked off on one day of rest against the St. Louis Blues last Thursday.

Keefe admitted that night, “It was two games in three nights for him, and that was the first sign where he really wasn’t himself.”

Winnipeg has a fair point about Jake Allen

If the Jets want an argument, Allen’s record against them is a better one than closure.

Allen is 9-11-3 with a 3.18 goals-against average and an .884 save percentage in 24 career games against Winnipeg. The 11 regulation losses are his most against any NHL team. He is 6-3-0 this season with an .881 save percentage and a 3.20 GAA, and 2-1-0 since the trade, including a 5-2 loss in Colorado on Oct. 28 in which he faced 45 shots.

The Jets have scored 23 goals in eight games since the trade, so this isn’t a lineup that has been running teams over. Kyle Connor does have 13 goals this season, and the Jets come in on a three-game winning streak.

What the trade has done for both teams

Since Oct. 23, the Devils are 7-1-0. Hellebuyck is 5-0-0 with a 1.96 GAA, a .913 save percentage and a shutout, Sunday’s 23-save win in Toronto.

The bigger change is in the team’s numbers. Through 10 games before the trade, Devils goalies had stopped 220 of 250 shots, an .880 save percentage. In the eight games since, they’ve stopped 176 of 196, an .898.

Winnipeg has gone 3-5-0 over the same stretch and been outscored 34-23. The Jets lost their first five games after the deal, which ran a nine-game slide to 0-7-2. They’ve won three straight since: 5-4 in overtime in Montreal after rallying from four goals down in the third period, 6-2 over the Vancouver Canucks and 4-3 over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Mark Scheifele’s power-play goal with 1.6 seconds left Sunday.

Mercer has a goal and three assists in eight games as a Jet, after four assists in 10 games with the Devils this season. Daws is 1-0-1 with a .913 save percentage in two games for Winnipeg.

Nov. 28 comes with its own schedule problem

Arniel’s other complaint is that the story will follow the Jets for “nine more” games. Winnipeg does play nine times before it visits Prudential Center on Saturday, Nov. 28.

The Devils host the Calgary Flames at 1 p.m. ET on Friday, Nov. 27, and the Jets at 7 p.m. the next night. That’s a back-to-back, the same kind of stretch Keefe pointed to after the St. Louis game. Whether Hellebuyck plays the Flames, the Jets or neither remains to be seen. The Devils should make that call the same way they made this one, on rest and the standings, and not on the Jets’ timetable.

At his request, Hellebuyck is scheduled to speak to reporters after Tuesday’s morning skate in Winnipeg. On Sunday, he said that’s when he would explain why he left.

Allen is expected in net for the 7 p.m. ET puck drop. The Devils are back at Prudential Center on Thursday against Washington.