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Pressure tightening on Red Wings and Howard
The Red Wings play four of their next five games at home, but for some reason they have played better on the road this season. It's inexplicable, really.
San Jose is just a point behind the Red Wings for the No.2 seed in the Western Conference, both teams having played 74 games. It's impossible to project who the Red Wings will play in the opening round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. As a second seed, it would be Nashville right now. As a third seed, it would be Los Angeles. It's kind of pick-your-poison type of thing - both those teams are big and physical, and could give the Red Wings a tough time in the opening round. Each is arguably stronger in goal than the Red Wings (Pekka Rinne, Nashville; Jonathan Quick, Los Angeles).
Could come down to Jimmy Howard. He played well Wednesday against Vancouver. Then again, did he match the Canucks' Roberto Luongo? Not really.
The Western Conference is stronger than usual top-to-bottom. It will be tough for the Red Wings from the very beginning of the playoffs this spring.
San Jose is just a point behind the Red Wings for the No.2 seed in the Western Conference, both teams having played 74 games. It's impossible to project who the Red Wings will play in the opening round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. As a second seed, it would be Nashville right now. As a third seed, it would be Los Angeles. It's kind of pick-your-poison type of thing - both those teams are big and physical, and could give the Red Wings a tough time in the opening round. Each is arguably stronger in goal than the Red Wings (Pekka Rinne, Nashville; Jonathan Quick, Los Angeles).
Could come down to Jimmy Howard. He played well Wednesday against Vancouver. Then again, did he match the Canucks' Roberto Luongo? Not really.
The Western Conference is stronger than usual top-to-bottom. It will be tough for the Red Wings from the very beginning of the playoffs this spring.
Labels: Jimmy Howard Roberto Luongo Pekka Rinne Jonathan Quick
posted by Pat Caputo at
9:14 AM
1 Comments:
I'm sure that forwards and centers throughout the NHL are sad to learn that Jimmy Howard won't be playing for awhile, as now they won't be able to pad their offensive stats against the Wings.
No, I'm kidding. But I do think that evaluating goalies strictly on W's and L's leads to bad analysis. This is because any goalie can rack up W's while playing for a very-good-to-great team like the Red Wings. You have to isolate them from that, and look at how they do their job of preventing pucks from entering the goal.
In that regard, Howard has been a bust. And I believe that both Vancouver and San Jose are great teams, and they've proven that they can dance around Howard with ease.
Hopefully, MacDonald can offer some lightning in a bottle here over the next couple of months.
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