Carolina keeps calling on Hellebuyck as Winnipeg's clock hits Friday

Friday is the day Winnipeg runs out of ways to not decide. Connor Hellebuyck's suspension is expected to end then, and the only team that has kept calling with real offers is a team that doesn't obviously need him. I'd treat Carolina as the favorite by default, not by design.

That's the whole Hellebuyck market in two sentences. Here's how the pieces sit.

The clock

The Jets suspended Hellebuyck on Sept. 16 after he didn't report to camp. He'd asked for a trade in the summer and then made the request public. Friedman has the suspension running through Friday, Oct. 23, and says Hellebuyck told the Jets before the opener that he planned to report.

Grade: Reported. Nobody in Winnipeg has put a date on it, but nobody has knocked it down either.

Scott Arniel's version on Monday was honest, at least. "Right now, everybody's waiting to see," he said. "We're not sure what the next play is going to be."

Kevin Cheveldayoff has said the Jets are listening and that no deal is done. That part is on the record.

The read: Once Friday comes, the Jets have three options and none are good. Trade him, pay him to sit, or put a goalie who doesn't want to be there back in the crease. The third one is the one nobody in the room wants.

The bidders

Dreger said on Wednesday that, as of Tuesday, the only consistent offer Winnipeg was getting was likely coming out of Carolina. Reported.

That doesn't square neatly with the other list going around. Earlier in the week Friedman had Buffalo, the Rangers and Utah as the main contenders and Carolina as a possible fourth, and he called a Carolina deal hard to build. Two good insiders, two different front-runners.

When that happens, I lean on the one who is talking about offers rather than interest. Interest is cheap. Offers have names in them.

File under: Trade winds.

What the numbers say

Here's the part that makes Carolina interesting. By our count the Hurricanes are 8-2-1 and have gone 4-1 in their last five, with the league's fourth-best penalty kill at 89.2 percent.

Pyotr Kochetkov is 6-0. He's also at .899, per NHL data. Brandon Bussi is 2-2-1 at .882. That's a team winning in spite of its save percentage, not because of it. Carolina can live with .899 in October. It's a different conversation in a second-round series.

Winnipeg, meanwhile, has been fine without him for a while and is now sliding. The Jets are 1-3-1 in their last five, even though Stuart Skinner is at .909 for the year and .918 over his last five starts. The goalie isn't the Jets' problem this month.

That's useful for Cheveldayoff. He doesn't have to take the first offer to fix a hole.

The read: Carolina is the one contender whose own numbers argue for a goalie. Buffalo and the Rangers want him. Carolina needs him more than its record says.

The fine print

Hellebuyck is in year three of a seven-year deal at $8.5 million a season, $59.5 million in all. He has a full no-move clause through next July. After that it becomes a 10-team list.

That date matters. Right now he can say no to anyone, which means the bidders are really bidding for his yes as much as Winnipeg's. The team that knows his list is the team that wins this.

He's also coming off a 23-23-11 season at .895. That's not the goalie who won the Vezina, and both sides price it that way.

The Panthers line

Florida was in on him in the summer, before the Brady Tkachuk deal. LeBrun had the Panthers out of the running by September because the assets were gone. Zito spent his chips on a winger, and nobody in Sunrise is complaining about that this week.

File under: Board room, for Winnipeg. Not a Florida file.

The read: My guess is Carolina, before the end of November, with the Jets keeping him away from the room until the paperwork clears. If he's back in a Jets sweater this weekend, everybody misjudged how stubborn Cheveldayoff can be.