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.

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!

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.

They just needed to confirm their suspicions.

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.