Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Hutchinson to make NHL debut as Jets’ goaltending under the microscope...again

Hutchinson

Six years after he was drafted by the Boston Bruins (explaining the image), Michael Hutchinson will make his NHL debut in goal for the Winnipeg Jets.

Hutchinson has spent most of the season with AHL St. John’s and ECHL Ontario. Tonight against the visiting Wild, the 24-year-old will step in for starter Ondrej Pavelec. (The team’s regular back-up, Al Montoya, is injured.)

Goaltending has once again been a weakness for the Jets this season. The team’s save percentage (.905) ranks in the bottom third of the NHL, just as it did last season. And the season before that. And the one before that, when the franchise was still in Atlanta.

Pavelec is signed through 2016-17 for a cap hit of $3.9 million. Among regular NHL netminders, his .901 save percentage ranks 44th out of 49. No goalie that’s played as much as he has owns a lower save percentage. And the same was true last year. And the year before.