dustylaw7

I can agree with that he needs to be better, but so does the team around him. Crawford, Halak, Quick, Luongo, Smith, Bobrovski all have save percentages that basically match howards, cut the guy some slack he's not playing awful, sure he's not absolutely killing it, but the guy is still making saves, and the shots he is facing are alot more frequent scoring chances then what the blues, kings, and chicago give up. My point i'm trying to make is i think the defense is are big problem, way to inconsistent, and not winning nearly enough battles, way to soft in are end.

Its not the shots we need to stop as much as we need to stop leaving players wide open infront of the net. So many screens with no defender pushing the damn forward out of the front of the crease! You can't leave guys wide open in shooting areas and not expect them to score, especially with solid screens on the goalie. Look at the game before against the islanders, howard could see the puck and posted a shutout even with tavares and vanek peppering him with shots. Defensemen need to do their job in our end, we lost way to many battles, left to many guys open in shooting lanes, and couldn't guard the front of the net from screens and to smack away rebounds. like i said the second one was the only soft goal, all the others were legit and had more blame on the defensemen then the goaltenders. Not to mention Howard made some big saves, he robbed hartnell with a toe save that looked like an easy tap in.

Howard was not to blame for that loss, we need are defensemen to make better plays. They were allowing screens to form all game, and not picking up open players. Howard only allowed 1 goal that he should have probably saved but was antipating the puck to be elevated, that was the second goal. The first goal was a screen on the powerplay, third goal was a snipe by giroux that was probably going wide but deflected off quinceys leg. Fourth goal was a hard pass all the way from the blue line right to the side of the net where couturier had a easy redirect in because no one was on him. Fifth goal was hartnells nicest goal ever, taking a pass skating towards the blue line he spins around and one times the puck top shelve while simmonds is infront screening howard, pfft no chance. if any other goalie was in net they would have faced the same outcome except for maybe the second goal. Even with all that he still has.909 save percentage which isn't brutal by any means, crawford has the same save percentage at this point in the year. No one needs to worry about Jimmy, worry about the defense.