I’ll Go Ahead and Say It: It’s Time to End the Experiment
October 30th, 2009 | by Chris Hollis |Say what you will about the comeback in tonight’s game. Happy that we got a point? Fine. Played with some serious fire in the third period? Sure.
But guess what? We still walked away with a loss and we had to dig out of TWO four goal deficits to even get to that point. And while the play of the team as a whole was pretty awful through the first half of the contest, Jimmah Howard did hardly anything to keep this team in the game. Did he make some saves tonight? Sure. Did he have a pretty good effort in Vancouver the other night? Yes.
But here’s the facts:
- Of the 12 shots he faced in the first period tonight, three were goals.
- Of the 11 shots he faced in the second period tonight, two were goals.
- During the third period comeback, Howard managed to stop all six shots he faced. Six.
- He stopped all four shots he faced in overtime.
- On the winning goal in the shootout, Howard never stood a chance. He was so slow to react that he would have had to start making his move when O’Sullivan touched the puck at center ice.
And that’s just tonight. On the season:
- Howard ranks 31st (of 35) in GAA, giving up 3.42 goals per outing.
- Howard ranks 34th (of 35) in save percentage, stopping 87.9% of the shots he faces.
- *To be fair, Osgood is 30th in GAA and 33rd in save percentage
OK, the stats show that he’s stinking it up, but let’s toss them out for a second and take a look at this on face value.
Go find the nearest mirror, look at your reflection and repeat after me: “I believe that Jimmah Howard is a good goaltender.”
If you kept a straight face, something is wrong with you.
Do you really believe that this guy can steal a game for the Wings if needed? I sure don’t. In fact, every time a shot comes at him, I hold my breath and say a little prayer. There is no easy save with Howard. Hell, there is no EASY with Howard. Period.
On almost every shot I’ve seen him face, he either winds up flat on the ice or stretched out halfway to the boards. He gives up monstrous rebounds. Most of the time after the first save, there is a gaping net for teams to shoot at because he’s either in the back of the net, or laying off to one side. He comes out farther than any NHL goalie I can ever remember. He’s constantly out of position. When he’s in position, he falls down or flails awkwardly. He still looks like he’s fighting the puck and still appears to be struggling to get with the speed of the NHL game.
Let’s play another game. Watch the replays of goals one, two and three tonight. Pick any one of them and tell me where he winds up at the end of the play. I think he might have the tip of his skate in the crease on one of them. Personally, number three is my favorite. Watching Howard try and move side to side is laughable. He goes left on his knees, pops up, tries to go right, trips like a drunk rec league netminder, regains his position a little bit and slides way too far on his recovery, giving Hemsky a gaping corner to shoot at. Terrible goaltending at its finest.
The fact is that Howard is just fundamentally flawed. His technique, his positioning, his mindset. It’s all wrong. And every time he’s out there, it looks wrong. Deny it if you want, but in this corner of the blogosphere it’s as clear as day: Jimmah. Howard. IS. NOT. GOOD.
So what’s the solution? Osgood’s numbers are almost as bad, so that’s not encouraging. But at least this isn’t Ozzie’s first rodeo and he’s at least proven that he has the ability to take over a game. Sure, he has his share of bad outings. But as the offense looks like it’s finally starting to find it’s stride, I trust the netminding duties to him much more than I do to Howard.
So what happens to Howard then? Honestly, I don’t know. I totally believe he could clear waivers and make it back to Grand Rapids, but what’s the point? There’s no reason to believe he’s going to magically blossom into a beautiful flower after another season, so why waste a roster spot to just watch him fade into “bolivian”? Look, our braintrust is one of the best in the game, but even they had their reservations about Jimmah coming into this season. That’s coming from a group that digs up gems 95% of the time, but sometimes things don’t pan out the way you hoped. It happens.
It’s unfortunate to see the kid struggle so much, but he’s just not getting better and now he’s digging us early holes that we have to fight like hell to get out of. It’s just not working. At this point, I don’t know what the answer to the Wings goaltending woes is. But I can tell you that it’s not Jimmah Howard. This is one experiment that is destined to fail.
I hear Dan Cloutier is looking for a job…
By Jamie Favreau on Oct 30, 2009
The way you explain it makes it hurt that much more. I haven’t liked him since the first time they brought him up. He hasn’t really been able to win a game. Sure they won in Vancouver but I don’t see him consistently winning.
By Nancy Bakanowicz on Oct 30, 2009
Thank you! I’ve been saying for a couple of years that Howard is just not good. He’s had his chances and he hasn’t impressed – at all. He is, at best, a career minor leaguer. Send him back to GR and sign Dan Cloutier.
By Kyle on Oct 30, 2009
The thing about stats is you can really work them in your favor when you need to. Did you mention that, if you don’t include the St. Louis game (this was before last night’s game, mind you) his save percentage was .936? Yeah it’s a small sample size, but I’m just prove that goaltending stats are meaningless at this point in the season.
He was not good last night, but I’m amazed at people who’ve flipped on him after he stood on his head and stole, yes, stole, the Vancouver game. If he had ANY kind of reasonable defensive effort in front of him, I’d probably be on this boat too. But to me, this is more of Wings’ fans looking for scapegoat and generally being way too impatient.
He does fight the puck. Wings fans must forget what it’s like to have a rookie goalie. Watch rookie goalies from elsewhere in the league. It’s a high pressure position, most goalies do it. Some have really awful outings, but that kind of thing stops when they get confidence. THAT’s my concern in Jimmy’s game, he doesn’t have a great mental outlook and I’m not sure how he could have come out so flat after playing so well before. But he made some big saves late in the game, as ugly as they looked, and right now we only have one goalie on the roster who’s doing that and fans are calling for his head.
There’s no way TJHE is ending so soon. Detroit has more patience than that and it’s absolutely absurd to think they’ll just get rid of him. Suck it up and take the lumps. Find me any elite goalie in the NHL that didn’t sputter through parts of their career. Jimmy’s been an NHL goaltender for three weeks, we should be glad that Holland and company aren’t as trigger-happy as most of the fans, otherwise we probably wouldn’t have any good players right now.
By Megan Saler on Oct 30, 2009
Cloutier? Oh dear. How far have we fallen? Cloutier was at Wings training camp. I was there. I was not impressed. Chris Osgood, Daniel Larsson, Thomas McCollum, and yes, even Jimmy Howard looked better than he did.
By Brad on Oct 30, 2009
In retrospect, I think management threw him to the wolves this season to show he wasn’t (and might never be) ready for the big leagues. I seem to recall sort of a fine-you-want-him-on-the-roster-here-he-is mentality around the announcement that he made the team.
They just needed to confirm their suspicions.
By Chris Hollis on Oct 30, 2009
Regarding Cloutier: A joke if anything. I’m in no way advocating for his return to the lineup.
To Kyle’s point: I’ll agree with you that stats can be made to say anything, and I really hesitated in pulling them into this. If anything, it just makes us realize how ugly the goaltending situation as a whole is right now in Motown. I believe it will shake itself out in the end, just not sure how long that will take.
The thing that really fuels this thought process in terms of Howard is that he’s been in the system for five years now, and there has never been a ton of discussion about him having enough upside to carry over to the NHL game. Sure, he started off hotter than hell in Grand Rapids, but produced only one winning season following that. Granted, there are a million different factors that come into play when considering that, so I’m not going to base an argument off of wins and losses on an affiliate team.
I think this post speaks more to his fundamentals, and as you mentioned, his mindset from night to night. Am I predisposed to think this way because of the way his game was dissected and hated on during the summer? Probably. Is that fair? Probably not.
Maybe this is all a bigger slam on Osgood’s lack of consistency. If Ozzie was putting down more consistent performances early this season, then maybe I would be more inclined to watch Howard flail around in net and learn the ropes.
I’ll say this much: I’m never above saying that I was wrong with an opinion and if Howard starts putting it up, then I will shut up and eat my crow and say I was wrong. I’m just not buying into him yet, for better or worse.
By Nancy Bakanowicz on Oct 30, 2009
I’m with you Chris – I’ll gladly eat my own words if Howard gives me reason to.
But until then – if it ever happens – he’s a bust. I’ll take anyone in the backup role at this point. Bring back Hasek!
By sigsegfalt on Oct 30, 2009
The problem with Howard is that his fundamental goaltending skills just aren’t where they need to be to compete at the NHL level. If you watch the goals in the links Chris posted above, this is obvious. If he was in position the majority of the time and was just letting some flukey ones in due to jitters or whatever, I could handle that. But he is all over the place. Several times last night he seemed to trip over himself, as if he was playing in leg pads that don’t quite fit him properly. Other times he makes it to where he needs to be but his angles are so off that it’s not very hard for guys like Hemsky to snipe the shit out of him.
I know the Wings have spent a lot of time and effort on developing Howard, but at some point they’re gonna have to cut him loose. I just can’t see him improving significantly enough to cut it as an NHL goaltender.