Jimmy Howard, Berlin Smurfs
Jimmy Howard of the Berlin Smurfs is having a great season, in fact one of the best ever by a EURO goalie, and he’s a big reason why the Smurfs lead the Southern Conference with 30 games to play. His 2.20 goals against average is even better than the league record 2.24 average that Jonathan Quick posted for Munich in Season 2. He started the all-star game for the South and shut out the Northern Conference in the first period.
As goalies go, Howard has been extremely consistent. Originally with the Oslo franchise, his save percentage through 72 games during Season 1 was 89.1 percent and that was his worst season. He followed that up with a little lighter workload and save percentages of 90.0, 90.8, 90.0 and this season he has improved to 91.6 through 44 games. Howard has company at the top of the save percentage list where he stands shoulder to shoulder with Dublin’s Brian Elliott and rookie Martin Jones of London.
During Season 3, Berlin GM Guybrush Threepwood acquired Howard for two players: goalie Semyon Varlamov and forward Jarkko Immonen. That trade looks lopsided in Berlin’s favor so far because Varlamov, who gets the lion’s share of struggling Oslo starts, hasn’t hit the 90 percent mark in save percentage and Immonen, a center, has seen his production halved in the last three seasons from 22 points in 38 games, to 10 points in 38 games to just 5 points in 40 games this season. Fourteen games ago, coach Claude Julien benched the Finn and replaced him with Andrei Loktionov. In Immonen’s defense, he has had more takeaways than giveaways in all three of his seasons. And Oslo got younger in the trade. Both Varlamov and Immonen are four years younger than Howard, who is now 31 years old.
How Howard will perform in the playoffs is anyone’s guess. Last year, he came up with a shutout in Game 7 of the Smurfs’ first-round series against Frankfurt (now Lisbon), but he and the Smurfs were blown away by Athens, giving up 19 goals in four games.
After this season ends, Howard will have the option of staying with Berlin next season for another $5.1 million paycheck or trying his luck elsewhere in the league. Threepwood must hope he decides to stay, regardless of how the Smurfs do in the playoffs. The team is currently fourth best in the EURO at keeping opponents from getting shots on goal, but thanks to Howard, they move up to second in the league in goals against per game. They are also number one in penalty killing with a success rate of 88.3 percent.
