Now that was a Jim Dandy.
Jimmy Howard didn’t literally stand on his head Wednesday but the Detroit Red Wings goaltender came awfully close with 26 saves over the first 40 minutes – many of them on breakaways and point-blank chances - allowing the Wings to hang around and defeat the New York Rangers 2-1 on Drew Miller’s third-period goal.
“Jimmy stole the game,” Detroit coach Jeff Blashill said. “Honestly, that’s one of the better performances I’ve seen from a goalie, probably at any level.
“I thought he was excellent.”
So did everyone else.
“Without him we wouldn’t have won this one,” Detroit captain Henrik Zetterberg said.
No. 2 With A Bullet
Howard recognizes his role with the Red Wings is to support Petr Mrazek and this season, he’s far more comfortable about filling it.
“Let’s be honest, right now Pete’s the No. 1,” Howard said. “And I think I know how to handle the situation a lot better.
“Last year, I didn’t quite understand how to be the back up. I’d never been in it before. I think I fully understand the role now and how to be mentally sharp between starts.”
That understanding involves being ready to answer the bell whenever it rings and no matter how infrequently that might be.
“It’s just living in the moment,” Howard said. “It’s coming to the rink every single day and creating a mindset where you’re ready to work, ready to learn and that’s what I’ve done.
“It’s just working every single day on the little things in the game and really tightening that up.”
Familiar Maladies
As much as they were excited to get the victory, the Wings also get that if they continue to perform as they did for the first two periods Wednesday, wins will be few and far between in the long haul.
Some familiar scenes played out on the ice for much of the night, as the Wings came in second in the majority of puck battles, struggled to get out of their own zone and too often allowed Rangers players to get between them and the Detroit goal.
“I thought we were terrible in the first (period),” Zetterberg said. “The PK was good in the second (killing off a pair of five-on-three disadvantages). And then in the third we started to play better. But we can’t play like this if we want to win.
“We’re happy that we got the two points but we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
What do the Wings need to work on? Allow Zetterberg to count the ways.
“There’s a lot of things,” Zetterberg said. “I can’t just say one.
“You’ve got to be on the right side of people. You’ve got to execute on passes. The first period, we’ve got to win our battles.
“That’s three points right there.”
Three points that if they continue to plague the Wings will deny them from gaining two points from most games.
“I think the message after the game is we weren’t good enough,” Miller said. “We have a lot of things that we could have done better tonight, (such as) not giving them as much speed.
“They’re a team that plays really fast and they’ve got some guys that can fly but we’ve got to be better in slowing them down.”
Howard sought to accentuate the positive that was the outcome.
“At the end of the day, we found a way to get two points,” Howard said. “It’s definitely not the way we wanted to start through two periods, turning pucks over.
“ We found a way to get a W on the road. That counts for something.”
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