Jimmy Howard Starts Conditioning Stint in Grand Rapids
By Nick Seguin
7 years ago
The Detroit Red Wings assigned goaltender Jimmy Howard to the Grand Rapids Griffins today for a conditioning stint.
Since he hurt himself in December, this will be Howard’s second conditioning stint with the Griffins. Last month, he played two games with them, going 1-1-0 and making 40 saves. Unfortunately, in his second game, he re-aggravated his sprained MCL which kept him out for another month. The last time he played for the Red Wings was December 20th, 2016.
Howard has a long history of injuries, not having played a 60+ game season since 2010-11. This is the second injury he sustained this year alone and it stings particularly bad because of the fantastic season he was having. Though he’s only been kept to 17 games this season, he leads all goalies in the league (>15 games) with a 0.934 SV% and ranks second with a 1.96 GAA.
Howard has a cap hit of $5.29M attached to him and the Wings have him signed until 2018-19. The more he gets injured, the harder it will be for the team to trade him or entice the Vegas Golden Knights in the upcoming expansion draft.
I wrote earlier this season about why Jimmy Howard should have been in the Vezina conversation, but has no chance of winning. Hopefully his MCL has healed and is stronger than before, but with Howard’s luck when it comes to injuries, I’m not hopeful.
The Griffins, currently on a seven game road trip, play tonight in Texas against the Stars and again on Tuesday in San Antonio against the Rampage. Howard should only need to play a couple of games to get his stride back, so if everything goes well, he could join the Red Wings next weekend at the Joe.
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