Detroit Red Wings: Setting high, medium and low bars for Ville Husso
Setting expectations for Detroit Red Wings netminder Ville Husso isn’t a particularly easy task. Sure, hockey analytics have come a long way over the past 12 or 13 years, and our ability to gain a deeper understanding of the game of hockey is only limited by our willingness to absorb new kinds of information. Still, there are plenty of holes in what both data and the eye test can tell us. That’s never as evident as it is when trying to predict what a goaltender will do in any given season.
Especially when that goalie is someone like Husso, who has all of 109 career starts to his name—56 of those starts coming last season alone. The Detroit Red Wings clearly believe that the 28-year-old is capable of being a No. 1 in this league. They wasted little time jettisoning Alex Nedeljkovic when it became clear he wouldn’t be The Guy as Detroit moved into the next phase of its rebuild. If general manager Steve Yzerman didn’t think Husso could hack it, quite frankly, he’d be employed elsewhere entering 2023-24.
Yet he enters the campaign the undisputed top netminder in Hockeytown, backed up by James Reimer. With all that in mind, we decided to undertake a bit of a thought exercise as the dog days of summer slowly melt away. Here, the goal is to set three bars that Husso could conceivably clear this season.
The “low bar” will be the baseline expectation. The Detroit Red Wings won’t be overly pleased or despondent if these things happen.
The former 94th-overall pick will have done exactly what was expected of him and nothing more. The “medium bar” represents a realistic but meaningful step forward for Husso’s game. If these things happen, the Red Wings might flirt with a playoff position, with goaltending being a big reason why. And the “high bar” will be pie-in-the-sky dreams. These are things that Yzerman and Co. (and the fans) would love to see but might not be all that likely. Keep in mind that all of these scenarios assume health. Let’s get into the weeds.
The Low Bar – Ville Husso plays slightly less, and the Detroit Red Wings reap the benefits.
This kind of campaign would see Husso play less frequently, which ought to prevent him from wearing down like he did a year ago. The Helsinki, Finland, played in just one fewer game in 2022-23 than he did in the previous two seasons combined. That turned out to be too big of an ask for the netminder, and his play trended downward as the months rolled by.
Reimer is the kind of secondary option who could comfortably make around 35 or 40 starts (he’s been known to go on heaters from time to time), which would put Husso in a much more comfortable range. Consider this: through his first 40 games last year, he posted a 21-13-5 record to go along with a .904 save percentage in all situations. After that, he went 5-9-2 and a .872 save percentage. That’s a drastic difference, so the Detroit Red Wings are likely hoping to keep Husso around 40 starts.
Hovering a handful of games over .500 would be a reasonable low bar for him to clear, as would an all-situations save percentage in the low .900s.
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The Medium Bar – Detroit Red Wings starter, Ville Husso, evolves into an above-average starter.
Given how Husso’s game collapsed after 40 games a year ago, it’s tough to imagine a likely scenario where the netminder plays too much more than that in 2023-24. It’s also worth considering that 40 starts were his magic number in 2021-22 while in St. Louis, where he received Vezina Trophy votes for his work with the Blues.
There exists the possibility, however, that Husso finds a new gear via training this summer and develops the endurance needed to appear in more contests while maintaining overall competence. The days of the workhorse No. 1 are slowly going the way of “the enforcer,” but in 2022-23, 21 goalies started more than 45 games, and 17 of those appeared in 50 or more—including Husso.
If he could nudge his way toward this stratosphere again while maintaining his counting stats from last year’s first 40 outings, that’d represent a pretty significant step forward for the player. It’s not outside the realm of possibility at all, but the Detroit Red Wings clearly aren’t counting on Husso to play 56 times again. James Reimer can handle a lot of action and might very well be aiming to steal the starting job for himself.
If Husso can fight that challenge off and secure this kind of the lion’s share while also posting respectable 5-on-5 numbers, that’d be stellar development for Detroit.
The High Bar – Detroit Red Wings starting goaltender, Ville Husso, turns into a game-stealing Vezina Trophy contender.
Stranger things have happened. Goalies come out of nowhere seemingly every season. In 2021-22, Jacob Markstrom was entering his age-31 season with a new team, the Calgary Flames. He led the NHL in losses that year, posting 19 while winning 22 times and carrying a .904 save percentage in all situations. No one had him earmarked for a Vezina Trophy push entering his age-32 campaign, but that’s exactly what the Flames received from Markstrom during his second year with the team.
Markstrom and Husso are different players in very different situations, but the fact remains that it’s not unheard of for a netminder of this caliber to get on a heater that seems to last all season long. It’s easy to forget now, but Ville was arguably the Red Wings’ early-season MVP last year and was pretty stellar for them until he wasn’t. We said in the beginning that this was a pie-in-the-sky hope for Husso and Detroit. It’s not totally outside the question, but it’s not particularly likely, either.
It’d be a lot of fun to witness, though. When was the last time the Red Wings had a development like that? Especially in goal.
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These seem like pretty fair and clear-cut bars for Husso to clear in the coming season. The Detroit Red Wings aren’t expecting him to be a world-beater, but it sure would be a blast to see him turn into one. Two seasons of the medium-to-high bar-clearing caliber, and he’ll be in for a pretty serious payday in the summer of 2025, too, when he’ll be eligible to hit the market as a UFA. For this season, though, Detroit is likely hoping that the goalie will continue to improve at a fair rate along with the rest of the roster.
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(All statistics appear courtesy of NHL.com and Hockey-Reference.com.)