Detroit Red Wings: Setting high, medium and low bars for Ville Husso

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.

***   ***   ***

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.

(All statistics appear courtesy of NHL.com and Hockey-Reference.com.)