Goaltending

[Old School Hockey]

While many here know me as a Howard enemy.

 

I am soooooo tired of this *uckng  $5 plus million dollar abastrose.   Anyone have a son who can strap on some pads??

 

Yes I get it he’s done some ok crap.  But he’s NOT the guy to take this team anywhere.  After EVERY goal he looks to see who he can blame!,,,

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

Well, given that Detroit has finally admitted to themselves that a rebuild is necessary, I think the team simply rides out Howard's contract (1 yr left at a $5.3M cap hit after this season), in the meantime see what you really have with Jared Coreau, and all the while overseeing some goalie development internally or see if acquiring a very young goalie to grow with the soon-to-come young core is a viable option.

 

The Wings are likely going to dip further down the spiral, so to speak, before rising again, and I have to think that a few more veteran or bad contracts are gonna have to be subtracted or expired before the team can see a legitimate rise.

 

In the meantime, the Wings have a nice draft board for 2018 (they pick twice in each of the first four rounds), have some young players already on the team with NHL experience, and can take a bit of time looking for Howard's replacement.

 

I get it not liking Howard in net and I agree he isn't the guy, especially given where the Wings are and given his age, but may as well run out his contract while the next big thing in goal becomes clear to the Wings front office.

 

Of course, there is always the possibility that some deal could be made or some young players play well beyond their years to help accelerate the Wings rebuild, but I don't think you are gonna find a miracle in goal overnight.

May as well leave the veteran in there till after next season, aggravating to some Wings fans as that may be, and maybe by then, you will have found your man in net.

[Old School Hockey]

Huck Foward.  The guy has underachieved since the day he was GIVEN the starting job.

 

Hes today’s Chevladrae.

[yave1964]

History of the Wings goalies for nearly 70 years:

 

Sawchuk wins a ton of cups and looks to be a God.

Sawchuk dealt away, Glen Hall takes over, puts up great numbers doesn't win cups.

Hall traded, becomes best goalie in the game, Sawchuk returns in an overpayment (Bucyk who went on to a HOF career with boston).

Sawchuk very ordinary, fans turn on him, ran out of town.

Hank Bassen and his ilk given chances, none do much. Roy Edwards is the primary during the final years of Gordie and is blah.

Roger Crozier flames brightly for a short time before burning out. Fans turn on him he is shipped out.

Sawchuk has one last fling with the Wings, it ends with him looking lost and booed nightly.

The 70's Jim Rutherford, Ron Low toil in mediocrity, a horrible overpayment for the aging Rogie Vachon ends badly. Oh I forgot we had the last few years of Eddie Giocamin. Bet he wishes he could frget too, he was washed up and awful.

The 80s seen a constant stream of has beens and never weres getting a moment or two in net, Millen, Rutherford (again!) Gilles Gilbert, Eddie Mio, Bob Suave, Larry Lozinski,Corado Micalef are all given chances. To be fair the most underrated goalie in team history Greg Stefan started much of the decade  but the team was so bad that they couldn't win no matter who was in net.

The 90's Cheveldae put up great regular season numbers and choked away several postseasons. Bob Essensa was God awful and a young Chris Osgood cost us the 1994 season when we were upset by the 8 seed Sharks.

  Veteran Mike Vernon came in and got us over the hump and won us a cup in 1997 before we lost him to free agency. Osgood won in 1998 before playing poorly in a couple of playoffs and being run out of town. Dominik Hasek came in and won a cup in 2002.

  Curtis Joseph replaced the aging dominator and was very average with the Wings,. Manny Legace had a moment but no postseason success and the team never seemed to trust him in net. Dom and Ozzie came back and helped us to a cup in 2008 and a final appearance in 2009. Ty Conklin had a few years as one of the games best backup.

  Since then Howard has mostly been the man with Osgood as a backup for a bit, Mrazek looked like he was the answer before he suddenly fell apart, there are a few okay prospects in net who haven't even started playing in the AHL yet so Howard it is for this year and next.

  So the 40's we had the great Harry Lumley and the fifties we had Sawchuk and Glen Hall, we hated Hall for not winning cups, we hated Sawchuk when he came back for not being Hall and our sixty year hate affair with almost every goalie we have had in net has been continual. We hated Osgood because even tho he won us a cup in 1998 and again in 2008 many have felt that we should have won more, we loathed Cheveldae although his numbers werecrazy good, other than a few years of the Dominator and another year or two for the most part all that you have had to do to get a Wings fan frothing at the mouth is mention their goalie if the moment and froth indeed they would. 

  To me the most hated Wings goalies in the sixty years were in no particular order, Cheveldae, Howard, Sawchuk (second time) Vachon, Cujo and arguably Osgood. The thing that stands out to meis all were very good at times but the Wings fans have been spoiled and unrealistic expectations have us wanting a cup every year. The goalie like the quarterback in football gets too much credit when they win and too much blame when they lose. Overall, going back to the end of WW2 with Lumley so for 75 years, the Wings more often than not have had at worst competent goaltending but it has never been enough for the fans satisfaction often even when we win.

[SpikeDDS]

@yave1964

 

No mention of Glen Hanlon? I remember him taking a slap shot to the groin taking him down. It was revealed after the game that the shot actually fractured his cup! He was never the same goalie after that either. Scary!

 

Otherwise, a very good review of RW goalie history, @yave1964.

 

He’s right. Howard stays through his contract. The focus needs to be on the future. We need either time to develop a young goalie talent within our own system if possible, or else pick and develop multiple skaters from the draft to add to and support our new core of talent until we are more competitive, and then acquire one from the FA market.

 

We’ve been saying that this “gonna get worse before it gets better” was coming, and here it is. Get used to it for a season or three (hopefully closer to one, but don’t be surprised if it’s closer to three).

 

The difficult part in today’s game is that with the parity now, MOST bad teams don’t LOOK that much worse than bubble teams do. The most frustrating part of this for me has been Holland and others acknowledging that fact often, and yet acting as if they were better than they really were just because they have SOME talent on their teams, and therefore making the decisions for far too long and far too many times to try to eke out a low playoff spot which could only end up in a first or, at VERY best, a second round exit instead of resigning themselves to the draft, thinking of the future. As if that was somehow a desirable outcome.

 

The worst thing that has happened to this franchise in the last 20 years—with the obvious exception of Franzen vs. Hossa—was The Streak getting close enough to 25 years long to make achieving that somehow a more desirable outcome than acquiring and developing the talent of which we now do not have enough. That miscalculation has led to both the retention and overpayment for second- and third-tier talent and to our moving young talent that is now flourishing on other teams.

 

As we have noted, Holland et al have now FINALLY seen the light, but so late now that it will take several seasons before we will be back where we want to be. Swallow that pill if you have not yet done so. 

 

There WILL BE good news though. The good news is that we will be seeing a “perfect storm” of the ends of some of these bloated contracts at the same time (hopefully) as the coming-of-age of this wave of young talent that we will have resulting from the numerous picks we have acquired. I am actually optimistic for our chances for climbing out of the poop pit that we are in right now, but not for another 2-3 seasons. Until then, you had better get used to what we are seeing now. Prepare yourselves. If they play better than I think, I will take the pleasant surprise. But I’m not COUNTING on that, nor should you.

 

Instead, my focus is on the horizon, and I would suggest we all lift our eyes from the very choppy waters that we are now in and will be in for the next couple of seasons and instead anticipate what is coming. Don’t look for wins. Look at development of our talent. For example, see if AA can learn to bring his game on a nightly basis instead of the on-again-off-again pattern we see in his early career. Not for now, but for later. I like that we have young speed. That bodes very well for our future, as everyone can see this game accelerating. On the offensive side, we should continue to seek that and a scrappy net-front player.

 

But MOSTLY, we need D talent, D talent, D talent. Offense is fun to watch, but Cups are not won without a solid D core, and those do NOT grow on trees for easy picking. They come from the draft.

 

Goalie talent won’t matter much if we don’t have the solid D core in front of them. Some say that Chris Osgood was the beneficiary of that and made an average goalie into a very good goalie. They may or may not be right. We will never really know. But what we DO know is that it certainly made him better than he would have otherwise been. So if we can develop another Carey Price, fine. But I think acquiring and developing a solid D core is FAR more important right now than replacing Howard. So for now, we ride out Howard, warts and all, as we improve our D for a few seasons. 

 

One more piece of good news: The U.S. men took the gold medal in curling, so you have something else you can watch while we retool!

 

;-D

[yave1964]

Yeah Hanlon, Joey Mac, Mark Laforest, lol, missed a few.

 

Agreed it is going to get worse before it gets better, 2 picks in each of the first four rounds this year after a decent haul last year is a nice start. Moving Tats and Mrazek was a step in the right direction but we have a long way to go.

 

  I am far from convinced that Holland is the answer as far as drafting goes, it was always taken care of by Jim Nill in ou better drafts, last year and the year before after the first round Holland reached on pretty much every pick, we need nice safe drafting, best available not players who we feel might project into this or that. I am not convinced that Holland can hit home runs with the draft picks we have and we need a monster draft this year and next for this to work.

[SpikeDDS]

@yave1964

 

In 100% agreement on Holland. But we’ve said all of this before, so I won’t repeat it other than to say you’re right.

 

The only thing I might add to what you said is that he needs to balance taking the best remaining player in the draft vs. the best remaining player at the position we need most. We are fortunate this season to have a deeper draft of D-men, which may make this less of an issue, but last year with the pick of Rasmussen instead of the best remaining D prospect, asking if Rasmussen is really THAT much better than the available D-men at the time was a legit question, especially since the talent level dropped off sharply after the first part of round 1.

 

We need to focus on the pieces that we don’t have, especially because it is practically impossible to acquire a top-tier D-man in the current NHL culture outside of the draft. And if not, we better have a DARN good reason for taking someone else. 

 

To wit: if we come out of the first round, and neither of our picks is a D prospect, I’m gonna flip!!

[Old School Hockey]

On 3/6/2018 at 7:13 AM, SpikeDDS said:

@yave1964

 

No mention of Glen Hanlon? I remember him taking a slap shot to the groin taking him down. It was revealed after the game that the shot actually fractured his cup! He was never the same goalie after that either. Scary!

 

Otherwise, a very good review of RW goalie history, @yave1964.

 

He’s right. Howard stays through his contract. The focus needs to be on the future. We need either time to develop a young goalie talent within our own system if possible, or else pick and develop multiple skaters from the draft to add to and support our new core of talent until we are more competitive, and then acquire one from the FA market.

 

We’ve been saying that this “gonna get worse before it gets better” was coming, and here it is. Get used to it for a season or three (hopefully closer to one, but don’t be surprised if it’s closer to three).

 

The difficult part in today’s game is that with the parity now, MOST bad teams don’t LOOK that much worse than bubble teams do. The most frustrating part of this for me has been Holland and others acknowledging that fact often, and yet acting as if they were better than they really were just because they have SOME talent on their teams, and therefore making the decisions for far too long and far too many times to try to eke out a low playoff spot which could only end up in a first or, at VERY best, a second round exit instead of resigning themselves to the draft, thinking of the future. As if that was somehow a desirable outcome.

 

The worst thing that has happened to this franchise in the last 20 years—with the obvious exception of Franzen vs. Hossa—was The Streak getting close enough to 25 years long to make achieving that somehow a more desirable outcome than acquiring and developing the talent of which we now do not have enough. That miscalculation has led to both the retention and overpayment for second- and third-tier talent and to our moving young talent that is now flourishing on other teams.

 

As we have noted, Holland et al have now FINALLY seen the light, but so late now that it will take several seasons before we will be back where we want to be. Swallow that pill if you have not yet done so. 

 

There WILL BE good news though. The good news is that we will be seeing a “perfect storm” of the ends of some of these bloated contracts at the same time (hopefully) as the coming-of-age of this wave of young talent that we will have resulting from the numerous picks we have acquired. I am actually optimistic for our chances for climbing out of the poop pit that we are in right now, but not for another 2-3 seasons. Until then, you had better get used to what we are seeing now. Prepare yourselves. If they play better than I think, I will take the pleasant surprise. But I’m not COUNTING on that, nor should you.

 

Instead, my focus is on the horizon, and I would suggest we all lift our eyes from the very choppy waters that we are now in and will be in for the next couple of seasons and instead anticipate what is coming. Don’t look for wins. Look at development of our talent. For example, see if AA can learn to bring his game on a nightly basis instead of the on-again-off-again pattern we see in his early career. Not for now, but for later. I like that we have young speed. That bodes very well for our future, as everyone can see this game accelerating. On the offensive side, we should continue to seek that and a scrappy net-front player.

 

But MOSTLY, we need D talent, D talent, D talent. Offense is fun to watch, but Cups are not won without a solid D core, and those do NOT grow on trees for easy picking. They come from the draft.

 

Goalie talent won’t matter much if we don’t have the solid D core in front of them. Some say that Chris Osgood was the beneficiary of that and made an average goalie into a very good goalie. They may or may not be right. We will never really know. But what we DO know is that it certainly made him better than he would have otherwise been. So if we can develop another Carey Price, fine. But I think acquiring and developing a solid D core is FAR more important right now than replacing Howard. So for now, we ride out Howard, warts and all, as we improve our D for a few seasons. 

 

One more piece of good news: The U.S. men took the gold medal in curling, so you have something else you can watch while we retool!

 

;-D

Howard had the best defense most goalies will ever have (post cap era) in 2009-2010 while having one of his worst years.