What Would a Bounce Back Year Look Like for Ville Husso?
There's no way to spin Husso's '23-24 as anything but a disappointment, but how could the Finnish netminder turn that around in the new campaign?
There's really no way to slice Ville Husso's 2023-24 season as anything but disappointing. The Finn—for whom Red Wings brass said at the beginning of the season the plan was roughly 55 starts, while acknowledging that the 56 appearances a year prior had been hard on Husso—played in 19 games (18 of them starts) and put up a .892 save percentage, 3.55 goals against average, and 9-5-2 record.
The obvious starting point for the disappointment is the games played figure, Husso's lowest since breaking into the league with 17 appearances for the Blues in the 2020-21 campaign). Injuries were the primary culprit, with a series of (according to the Red Wings themselves) unrelated groin ailments cut Husso's season short by February. Though coach Derek Lalonde continued to suggest he would return at some point, eventually that clock ran out, with a desperate wild card race no place to break back in a recently recovered goaltender.
"The most important thing with Ville is feeling healthy, and he feels 100%," Lalonde said at the Red Wings' recent "Street Hockey in the D" event, underscoring the centrality of health or a lack thereof to Husso's '23-24 season. "He feels healthy. Too bad last year on the injuries, because he had a really good offseason. If you guys recall, he came in leaner, probably had his best summer he's had off the ice, so I think that's something he can build on."
However, it's also worth pointing out that it's not as though Husso was in peak form when he was healthy, as that sub .900 save percentage suggests. If you break it down by month, you can see that Husso's form didn't exactly begin stellar and deteriorated throughout the season. In October, he was a .900 even in seven appearances. In November, he fell to an .882 in five games. In December, he bounced back to an .893 in six appearances. He only played one more game: in February, putting up six saves on seven shots before having to be pulled due to another injury flare-up.
Now, Husso has one year left on his contract at a $4.75 million cap hit. At the start of the summer, GM Steve Yzerman indicated that he preferred to move on from a three-goalie roster because of the logistical challenges Lalonde alluded to. However, presumably because of that cap hit, Yzerman couldn't unload Husso over the summer, and with one more year under contract for Alex Lyon and the acquisition of Cam Talbot, Detroit will run back its three-goaltender hydra.
What does that mean for Husso? Well, this probably isn't quite Husso's NHL last chance saloon, but it's not far from it. Entering the season on an expiring contract at 29 years old, it doesn't feel far-fetched to suggest that Husso is playing for his NHL future.
Unlike last year, Husso won't start the season as Detroit's number one option. Arguably, he is not even the number two, considering it was Lyon who kept the Red Wings afloat throughout the second half of the season. Instead, he will have to earn his way to the crease, and per Lalonde, that's a challenge he's ready to embrace.
"The good thing about Ville is he's also excited about the competition," Lalonde said. "And again, credit to our management group, with three goalies last year, it's very unique to the league, certainly not ideal in some situations when you talk about practice time and game time, but it literally saved our season last year, and I think we're gonna start with that same mentality this year."
So what would a bounce back season look like for Husso? Of course it has to start with good health, but from there, it ought to kick on to playing his way into being the Red Wings' top option the way Lyon did a year ago, and earning the starts that were forecasted for him at this time a year ago.
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