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Guest The Axe

Howard = Average

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Lundquist and probably Rinne are the only goalies I'd consider elite right now. There are a lot of other younger guys who might get there, or they might start showing their warts like Fleury has. Based on both pay and performance, Howard is in that 8-15 range. He has enough talent to be better, but he seems to be missing that mental edge that Osgood had, and he gets obviously rattled at times.

lol, Osgood again? Osgood had many a bad periods of shaky play, hell no one even thought he could win a cup for us. he was ripped on worse then howard is most of the time, everyone forgets the bad and remembers the good. Osgood was not some poster boy of mental edge on the ice. He was a good goalie behind a great team. In fact his stats are actually pretty bad considering the teams he had in front of him, so i think you should look at it a little more realistically and take ozzie off the pedestal you've placed him on.

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robo, it was pretty easy. I took all the goalies in the NHL that have played 35 or more games this year-the starters. The numbers listed are their career numbers. I took the 2 lists and what their rankings are on each list. Added together, then divided by 2. So a guy with say the 4th best save % and the 10th best GAA would be a average of 7.

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Just for reference, some other goalie numbers for their careers:

Osgood

.905 save %

2.49 GAA

Hasek

.922 save %

2.13 GAA

Joseph

.906 save %

2.79 GAA

Vernon

save % wasn't kept

2.98 GAA

Legace

.912 save %

2.41 GAA

all numbers are regular season numbers. It is pretty clear that Howard is the second best G we have had over the last 20 years. Prior to this year his save % was the same as hasek's.

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Those teams also don't have Datsyuk and Zetterberg is my point. They don't have two elite two way forwards yet they have either gone just as far as the Wings, or further in the last couple years. Did you forget we had Lids, Raf, Kronwall, Stuart and Howie couldn't win? Those 4 are better than any top 4 you just named. Then mix in D and Z.

Do you remember when Nashville knocked us out ? Do you remember the performance Rinne put on? We couldn't even score.

Toronto forwards are fast but suck ass on defense, and their top 4 are not good at all (I watch quite abit of Leaf games). They took Boston to game 7 and should have went to the next round except for the choke.

We have a better team then New York, but Lunqvist keeps them in every single year and have made it further then us in a couple playoffs now since 2009.

Howard just doesn't have what it takes to get it done when it matters. This year just screams, not so good D = your true goalie.

While I admit that Jimmy isn't a goalie that will steal many games much less an entire series like Lundqvist or Rinne, he is a far better goalie than Reimer is.

The NYR have a stronger defensive group of defensemen than we do and that can help Lundqvist out...I mean McDonough and Klein both block a lot of shots and clear rebounds very well. I am not making excuses for Howard but you're not factoring in some of the shall we say, disadvantages Howard has in comparison to some other goalies.

We are really lucky to have the two best two way players in the league on our side and that can only help from a defensive standpoint. Having Lids, Raf, Stuart, Kronwall as the top four with Jimmy as the starter is a bit of a catch 22. Yes, that is an amazing top four but Jimmy was in his first two seasons as "the guy" and that comes with some adjustments (especially in the playoffs). You also have to factor in that Rafalski wasn't getting any younger (this doesn't apply to Nick), Stuart had won his Cup and his head and heart were in a different place in 2010 and Kronwall missed half a season due to injury.

All that said, I do agree with you. However, if we put the Howard of last year in a net with the aforementioned top 4, I think he would definitely be a winner.

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robo, it was pretty easy. I took all the goalies in the NHL that have played 35 or more games this year-the starters. The numbers listed are their career numbers. I took the 2 lists and what their rankings are on each list. Added together, then divided by 2. So a guy with say the 4th best save % and the 10th best GAA would be a average of 7.

Ok, I was thinking you did something weird with the actual numbers, but now I see it's just an average of their rank. Thanks for clarifying!

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lol, Osgood again? Osgood had many a bad periods of shaky play, hell no one even thought he could win a cup for us. he was ripped on worse then howard is most of the time, everyone forgets the bad and remembers the good. Osgood was not some poster boy of mental edge on the ice. He was a good goalie behind a great team. In fact his stats are actually pretty bad considering the teams he had in front of him, so i think you should look at it a little more realistically and take ozzie off the pedestal you've placed him on.

Who gives a s*** what some people thought about him? They thought he couldn't win a Cup for us? Well, he won us two Cups at very different stages of his career. He also made the All Star team twice in the 90s and then again ten years later in his mid-30s. That's the only reason he managed to become only the 10th goalie to hit 400 wins too, I suppose, right? And I guess he was once a Vezina runner up solely because he had a good team in front of him? And he only lost because of Jim Carrey's freak season. But I bet if you ask Carrey if to trade his Vezina season for Osgood's career, he'd do it in a heartbeat. So, why should Chris Osgood give a s*** about the tiny voices of tiny people who seem to get off on tearing him down?

And besides, that's ultimately the whole point! He didn't! Osgood put up with far more s*** than the average goalie mostly because his lowlights were of the tremendously ugly and shocking variety that hit every highlight reel. But he always came back. He never crumbled, never folded, never gave into a feeling of defeat. And again, most people who have been in the Chris Osgood bashing camp tend to ignore the fact that aside from a few center ice goals against, he also managed to have some very impressive stretches that earned him some decent league-wide recognition as an individual, and he performed well in his time away from Detroit on much weaker teams sans a season in which he struggled with an ongoing injury.

He went to a terrible New York Islanders after Hasek arrived in Detroit and lead the team to the playoffs for the first time in 7 years. I'd love to hear how that was a great team that Osgood owes his decent stats and winning record to. And again, he posted winning records in each of the three seasons he spent out of Detroit on much weaker teams, despite struggling with an ankle injury throughout his second year on the Islanders. And if you look at his stats in those three years, they were pretty good in the first and third, in each posting a .910 SV% and a 2.5 and 2.24 GAA respectively. The middle season with the rough stats was the injury-plagued season, and again, once that was out of the way, his numbers returned to pretty decent form.

When Osgood struggled most (outside of 2008/09 which was a bizarre anomaly in his career) it was when he was struggling with legitimate injuries. But he'd always battle back. He'd give up terrible goals at terrible times, but he always bounced back. He was criticized by countless fans and never given much credit in Detroit early on in his career, but he always battled back. Even when he got kicked out of town, he eventually came back. He battled through injuries, a changing league where his style and size put him at a disadvantage, a backup role, and still went on to have some of his best performances at the tail end of his career. Like I said in a long post a page back, Osgood had a tremendous amount of mental toughness that kept him hanging around and finding success despite all the adversity that tends to bury most goalies. Chris Osgood never stopped believing in Chris Osgood, and his belief served him well.

People can say all they want, but the guy has two more Cup rings won on his own efforts than most everyone who criticizes him, and no one can take much of anything away from his two outstanding playoff runs at the tail end of his career. Again, ordinary goalies don't shut out Sidney Crosby and the Penguins in the first two games of the Stanley Cup Finals; it doesn't matter what team they have in front of them. In those 2008 Finals, he got the job done better than anyone would even imagine would be possible with the greatest goalies at the height of their careers. And then in 2009, despite a team riddled with injuries, despite even struggling through Lidstrom being so injured that he missed games, he had an individual performance that exceeded his 2008 performance and lead the team all the way to game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, and they lost by 1 goal. He had great teams in front of him, but he was every bit as great as anyone on the team on an individual level, and at times, he was better. He would've easily picked up the Conn Smythe trophy in 2009 if we had pulled the series off, and if not for so many injuries to key guys, I have no doubt we would have done so.

I'm not saying he's a legend or an all-time great at the position like a Roy, Brodeur or Hasek, but he absolutely had a great career. When you really look at all he accomplished, it's pretty foolish to try and suggest that he's not a great goalie. Yes, great. Again, not all-time great, not a legend, but certainly, a more generic form of "great." Most goalies don't even hang around the league as long as he did let alone pick up 400 wins. He's easy to pick on because unlike most goalies who end up crumbling under the pressure of the position as criticism mounts, Osgood just kept hanging around. He never gave up; he never stopped believing in himself, and it paid off, not just for him, but for the team and it's fans as well.

You did enjoy that Cup win in 2008, didn't you? I can guarantee you this, without Chris Osgood in the picture, it would not have happened.

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Those teams also don't have Datsyuk and Zetterberg is my point. They don't have two elite two way forwards yet they have either gone just as far as the Wings, or further in the last couple years. Did you forget we had Lids, Raf, Kronwall, Stuart and Howie couldn't win? Those 4 are better than any top 4 you just named. Then mix in D and Z.

Do you remember when Nashville knocked us out ? Do you remember the performance Rinne put on? We couldn't even score.

Toronto forwards are fast but suck ass on defense, and their top 4 are not good at all (I watch quite abit of Leaf games). They took Boston to game 7 and should have went to the next round except for the choke.

We have a better team then New York, but Lunqvist keeps them in every single year and have made it further then us in a couple playoffs now since 2009.

Howard just doesn't have what it takes to get it done when it matters. This year just screams, not so good D = your true goalie.

THIS TEAM also doesn't have Datsyuk and Zetterberg right now.

Lol We're not going to win the cup every year just bc we have a good team. You act like bc we have x y and z we should win the cup. That's not the case. Vancouver has iced a great team for a while and still hasn't earned a recent a cup. Does that make them bad? Does that Luongo bad? Schneider? No, there's a lot of luck involved. Just bc Howard hasn't carried us to a cup yet doesn't mean he won't coast to a cup in the future.

"Toronto did this, Nashvillve did that"

Remember when we took the Stanley cup champs to game 7 in the 2nd round last year? You can't compare most runs cause everyone faces different teams.

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I'm sure this has been mentioned somewhere over the last 36 pages, but what I notice most about Jimmy's play this season is he seems to be playing extremely aggressively, coming quite far out of his net and whatnot.

I can understand why he might be doing it: if you're struggling, you are just trying to make yourself big. But I think it is a big part of all of the "bad bounce" type of goals that seem to be constantly going in against him.

It actually reminds me of what he looked like when he first entered the league, and the Wings had to learn really quickly to take away the pass, or the other team had an open net. A great example was the other night's game where he got beat so hard on a 2-on-1, because he had come out so far to challenge the shooter and didn't anticipate the pass...can't even remember the opponent but there have been enough examples.

And of course, the defense won't want to just take the pass and let Howie take the shooter, if those shots are going in with increasing frequency. And so it is a terrible feedback cycle: they aren't confident in him, so they play the shooter more, the puck is passed into the net and he looks even more terrible. The confidence of him and the whole team erodes. Wash, rinse, repeat.

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How are we supposed to measure whether Howard is any good if you don't compare him to other goalies?? For being a discussion board you Mods sure hate discussion taking place.

I don't really know what you guys want. Should we start a goalie comparison thread, one which will inevitably lead to Howard being discussed. Then we would have TWO Howard threads! Or would it be reasonable to discuss that in this thread? You know, the one specifically about Howard.

Edited by roboturner

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There is only one goalie EVER who would look above average behind this sieve of a defense and his name was Hasek.

Howard isn't the problem. Sure it would be nice if he could steal a few more games here and there, but it would also be nice if the Wings could score more than 1-2 goals a game and limit the stupid mistakes in front of him every once in a while too.

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How are we supposed to measure whether Howard is any good if you don't compare him to other goalies?? For being a discussion board you Mods sure hate discussion taking place.

It's fine to measure Howard against other goaltenders. It makes the most sense to compare him to current goaltenders in the league.

Had you read the posts on this page before spouting off, you'd see that the debate was turning into one about retired goaltender Chris Osgood. That is not the thread topic, not very helpful in evaluating Howard's performance, and has a long history on this forum of derailing countless threads with flame wars.

Not to speak for vladdy but her warning was basically stop arguing about Osgood and get back on topic.

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It's fine to measure Howard against other goaltenders. It makes the most sense to compare him to current goaltenders in the league.

Had you read the posts on this page before spouting off, you'd see that the debate was turning into one about retired goaltender Chris Osgood. That is not the thread topic, not very helpful in evaluating Howard's performance, and has a long history on this forum of derailing countless threads with flame wars.

Not to speak for vladdy but her warning was basically stop arguing about Osgood and get back on topic.

I have read it. What do you think is going to happen when you have 50 people in a discussion and only one place to discuss it? Some will talk only on topic and some convos/arguments will naturally shift to include someone else while still being most relevant to the earlier topic.

It only makes sense that he is compared to his predecessor. You know like how Aaron Rodgers discussions can at times turn into Rodgers vs Favre. It's not like Osgood played in the 70's, he just stopped playing a few years ago, and for the same Team! There are a number of players currently on the team that played with both of them!

Again, would you like to start another thread and have Two Jimmy Howard Threads?? Go ahead I'll post in both. But you know damn well that the conversations will end up being about the same thing that could be discussed in one thread.

Edited by roboturner

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I'll leave this conversation here as a learning experience for all, but in the future, any questions should be PM'd to a mod, not posted in a thread.

You're right - under usual circumstances discussing Osgood would be appropriate. However, it's a topic that has been rehashed countless times in countless threads and not one single person's mind was changed on their existing opinion. If anyone is interested in anyone else's opinion, use the search function read through past threads. There's plenty of previous conversations.

This conversation can't keep getting posted in new threads for the length of Howard's career.

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Is it time to bring this back up...??? 2-1 win in a shootout? probably not, but why not give it a shot.

Haha I guess so. I'll preface this by saying that I didn't watch the game (no cable = listened on the radio while reading Game of Thrones) so I can't comment on how he looked, but i am glad he got a huge win for us tonight, and in the shootout no less!

But you also have to take into account it was against the 2nd worst team in the league (although one that is, as a few stated in the GDT, probably quite similar talent/production wise to our current line-up, which also needs to be accounted for).

All in all, I'm just glad we got the job done (including Howard)

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I've liked Howard...in the past...before today's game...where he assisted on Boston's goal. What a dumbass move that was! It's like he went into complete panic mode. He could have pushed that puck up centre ice, slightly to his left, and he would have been fine. Time to retire, Jimmy.

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I've liked Howard...in the past...before today's game...where he assisted on Boston's goal. What a dumbass move that was! It's like he went into complete panic mode. He could have pushed that puck up centre ice, slightly to his left, and he would have been fine. Time to retire, Jimmy.

Definition of knee-jerk?

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I've liked Howard...in the past...before today's game...where he assisted on Boston's goal. What a dumbass move that was! It's like he went into complete panic mode. He could have pushed that puck up centre ice, slightly to his left, and he would have been fine. Time to retire, Jimmy.

Howard's never been very good at handling the puck, so a play like this shouldn't be entirely too surprising, like the guy or not. It's a weakness of his game, and all goalies have weaknesses. It was a terrible play and utterly atrocious timing for such a play, but if you liked the guy before and this is the only reason you're bent out of shape now, you either haven't been paying too close of attention or you'll get over it. I suspect the latter.

As said, he's never been known to be too hot at handling the puck, but he does many other things well a lot of the time. He's not perfect as we've seen through this regular season, but he was great in game 1, had some great moments in this game, and in the end, we absolutely didn't lose this game because of that play. I wouldn't even call it momentum turning. What was momentum turning, if you can even call it that this early, is when we kept taking stupid penalties and getting rattled by Boston's physical game. That is what lost this game for us.

If we can stay composed and stay out of the box and use our speed against Boston to draw penalties, we can beat them. If we lose our cool and give Boston too many power play opportunities, we're toast, and bad or great, Howard's play won't end up being the factor that changes the outcome of the series. Don't get me wrong, he needs to be on his A-Game no doubt to keep us in it, but it won't be enough to overcome Boston if the rest of the guys lose their cool and play into Boston's game.

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He's been good down the stretch until this game. Is Quick below average then since he's let in 12 goals in 2 games?

If you want to compare statistics... Why is howard a top 30 goaltender in wins for the regular season this year but not even on the board in GAA or save percentage? Answer: the rest of the team picks up his slack

and I'm not saying he's not a good (average) goalie.. I'm saying he's too inconsistent

Edited by GrindL1n3

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