The Red Wings are staring at a familiar problem in net, and this one may force them into a real decision.
John Gibson has opened another October in rough shape, posting a .860 save percentage and 3.37 goals against average. At the same time, Michal Postava has done everything asked of him and then some. He stunned the NHL in his debut, helping Detroit win a heart-stopping shootout against Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers, then went right back to the AHL and kept rolling with the Grand Rapids Griffins.
After his emergency call-up, Postava returned to Grand Rapids and improved to 5-0-0-0 on the season with a .955 save percentage and 1.20 goals against average.
That kind of performance puts Detroit in a tricky spot. The Red Wings have spent years trying to solve the goaltending puzzle, and the turnover has been relentless since Jimmy Howard retired in 2021. Since then, Detroit has started 14 different goalies: Jonathan Bernier, Thomas Greiss, Calvin Pickard, Alex Nedeljkovic, Magnus Hellberg, Ville Husso, Alex Lyon, Michael Hutchinson, Cam Talbot, Petr Mrazek, Sebastian Cossa, John Gibson, Daniil Tarasov and Michal Postava.
That’s a lot of movement for one position in just five years, even by NHL standards.
And yet, that kind of churn is hardly unique. The league’s best teams are still chasing stability in goal, from the Colorado Avalanche to the Carolina Hurricanes to the Vegas Golden Knights. But for the Red Wings, the latest stretch may be pushing them back to square one.
Postava’s rise makes the conversation unavoidable. He looks ready for the NHL, and not just because he’s been sharp in the AHL.
Standing up to McDavid and Leon Draisaitl and then surviving the shootout is a different level of test altogether. The Red Wings also appear to be leaning into a younger roster, and that approach is showing up in the numbers.
According to Ken Daniels, Detroit leads the NHL in rookie points with 18 among its newcomers.
If the organization really wants to keep opening the door for younger players, Postava feels like the obvious name to push forward.
That leaves the tougher question: what happens with Gibson or Tarasov?
The return on a goalie trade usually isn’t flashy. The Connor Hellebuyck deal is the outlier, not the standard. Even Sebastian Cossa, once widely viewed as the top goaltending prospect in the league, brought back only a first-round pick from the Utah Mammoth.
For Gibson, the market likely sits somewhere in the mid-to-late-round range, with a third-round pick as the kind of return Detroit might hope to land. That may not be enough to thrill the Red Wings, but if they’re serious about giving Postava a real chance, they may need to accept whatever value they can get for Gibson - or Tarasov.
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