The Winnipeg Jets sent Connor Hellebuyck to the New Jersey Devils on Oct. 23, 2026 and came back with a package that included Alex Command, Dawson Mercer, Nick Bjugstad, Nico Daws and two draft picks. The trade immediately reshaped both rosters, with Winnipeg adding a first-round forward in Command and New Jersey getting the franchise goaltender it moved hard to land.
Command was 18 when the deal was announced, a first-round pick at 12th overall in the 2026 NHL Draft who had already played six games for Orebro HK in the Swedish League this season and six more for its junior team. In those 12 junior games and six senior appearances, he had shown the kind of production that makes a top pick stand out early: 12 points, seven goals, five assists and 10 penalty minutes in the junior games, plus a gold medal with Sweden at the 2026 World U-18 Championships and seven points there in seven games.
That is the piece Winnipeg can point to when explaining the return. Hellebuyck is the player that made the deal possible, but the Jets did not move him for quantity alone. They turned one elite goaltender into a mix of present help, future value and age spread, with Mercer at 24, Daws at 25, Bjugstad at 34 and the two draft picks stretching out to 2027 and 2029. In practical terms, it is a bet that a roster can be rebalanced faster by spreading risk across several players than by holding the same weight in one crease.
Mercer brings the biggest established NHL profile of the group. He was New Jersey's 18th overall pick in the 2020 NHL Draft, had 420 career games and 213 points, and had started this season with 10 games and four assists. Daws has also been in the league long enough to matter, with a 26-26-1 career mark in 59 NHL games and a.897 save percentage, while Bjugstad arrived recovering from surgery after an 821-game career that has taken him through eight teams. The second-round pick in 2029 and the seventh-round pick in 2027 give Winnipeg more room to keep building after the immediate roster shake-up.
What makes the trade harder to read is what the Jets left unsaid. Moving a goaltender like Hellebuyck usually means a team has decided the roster around him needs a different shape, but that reason was not spelled out in the announcement. For now, the clearest next step is the same one both teams now face: Winnipeg has to see how quickly Command and the rest of the return can fit, while New Jersey must prove that the price of turning Hellebuyck loose was worth the cost.
