Why Red Wings Goalie Jimmy Howard Should Win NHL's Calder Trophy

In a way, most individual NHL awards are more evidence of prevailing opinion than objective excellence.

Are Pavel Datsyuk, Ryan Kesler, and Jordan Staal all outstanding defensive forwards?

Yes.

What makes one more deserving of the award than the other? Well, that's a matter of opinion.

Are Drew Doughty, Mike Green, and Duncan Keith all first-class players on the blue line?

Of course they are.

But even though the award is given to the defender with the "greatest all-around ability in the position," the notion of what constitutes "all-around ability" varies from person to person.

When it comes to the Calder Trophy, the NHL's Rookie of the Year award, we find similar problems of subjectivity.

Well, we usually do, but not this year.

This year, the three finalists for the Calder represent all three positions in hockey: goalie, defenseman, and forward.

While I suppose almost anything could be debated, the fact that playing goal is more difficult than playing defense and playing defense is more difficult than playing forward is, well, a fact.

So, given that fact, anytime there is a three-position race for the Calder Trophy, one could safely bet that the goalie will win out over the defender and the forward, simply because it is harder for a young player to distinguish himself in that position.

Still, being a Calder-nominated goalie doesn't, in and of itself, guarantee a victory.

However, being a Calder-nominated goalie and being the savior of your team's season?

Yeah, that should pretty well wrap it up.

Jimmy Howard started the 2009-10 season with the knowledge that this was, essentially, his last shot with the Detroit Red Wings.

The two starts he got during the exhibition season revealed that he might yet be able to assume regular back-up duties to Chris Osgood , as he looked calm, comfortable, and confident in goal.

However, once the season began in earnest, panic set in quickly as, promising or not, Howard looked to be the only option in goal for Detroit.

Osgood struggled mightily yet again, and the Wings as a whole looked disorganized and disinterested, dropping to 0-2 to start the season, their worst start in 20 years.

Through November and into December, the Wings began racking up injuries to key players and more losses than wins. The team as a whole, was in a tailspin.

The one bright spot emerging for Detroit was in goal, and it wasn't Osgood.

By early December, Howard was tightening his grip on the starter's job in goal for the Red Wings.

He didn't exactly look Vezina-bound, but he was winning and looking better and better while doing it, so much so that by January "Jimmy Howard" and "Calder Trophy" began appearing in the same sentence.

His 52-save performance against the Los Angeles Kings served as the young goaltender's coming-out party.

Folks in Detroit had begun believing in Howard prior to this, but his absolutely dominant performance against a Kings team that played as close to perfect a game as possible made everyone in the NHL take notice of the Red Wings rookie.

By February, the Red Wings were still out of the playoffs and still struggling to succeed while waiting to become fully healthy and find their game.

The only reason they were still in the hunt was Howard.

Now, here is where some attention must be paid to the team that was playing in front of him.

For the past decade and a half, any success a goalie has had in Detroit has always been tempered with, "yeah, but look at the team in front of him, of course he's going to look good."

While there may have been some truth to that statement in years past, that could hardly be applied honestly to Howard.

The team in front of him had trouble scoring goals, trouble clearing the puck out of their zone and for the most part, lacked anything resembling defensive consistency game in and game out.

Yet, they were winning.

They were winning because, despite the team in front of him, Howard was playing to win night after night.

Eventually, the Wings got healthy, got organized, and went on a 16-3-2 tear to close the season.

Howard finished with 37 wins.

And for those that would again throw out their "yeah but" arguments, these aren't 7-6 scoring fests we're talking about.

No, Howard also emerged as one of the best goalies, rookie or otherwise, of the entire 2009-10 season, finishing in the top five in goals-against (2.26) and save percentage (.924) in 63 games played.

Had all of this been accomplished by Osgood, a 16-year veteran with three Stanley Cup rings, the story would still be compelling, albeit one more of redemption than coming of age.

Anytime a team's salvation can be so squarely placed on a single player, a story of heroism is going to emerge.

However, the fact that a rookie goalie, facing his first and last shot to prove himself, single-handedly put a team on his back and righted a season destined for disappointment is worthy of more than just a good story.

Tyler Myers is a great young defenseman and Matt Duchene is a legitimate star, yet neither could be labeled as the sole reason Buffalo or Colorado made the playoffs.

Without Howard, the Red Wings would have missed the playoffs for the first time in 18 years.

For that reason alone, the question of who the best first-year player in the NHL was in 2009-10 has already been answered.