Execution Plan not matching Stored Proc Below is a stored proc to count the number of widgets made in a month. If no widgets are made, no records will exists. 

The execution plan shows an INNER JOIN of the M and A tables, where in the statement I am doing a LEFT OUTER JOIN.

I would like to count the number of widgets made in a time frame, join that to a month table (Jan-Dec), and have the results shown in an SSRS report. The join is because I cannot COUNT data that isn't there. 
Currently I am getting:

MonthName   Widget Count
February    2
March       3
April       4
May         6
June        5
July        4 
August      6
September   2
October     4
November    1
December    2


I would like to have the months where no widgets were made included in the list.

Here is the code:

DECLARE @OName varchar(50)
DECLARE @Start_Date DATE 
DECLARE @End_Date DATE

SET @OName = 'John'
SET @Start_Date = '01/01/2012'
SET @End_Date   = '12/31/2012'

SELECT   M.[MonthName]
    ,COUNT(A.[Widget_ID]) AS 'Widget Count'
FROM [Connector].dbo.[Months] AS M 
        LEFT OUTER JOIN  [SERVER].[DATABASE].[dbo].[Widget] AS A
        ON MONTH(A.[Widget_Date]) = M.[MonthID]  
WHERE     (A.[Operator_Name] LIKE '%'+ @OName +'%')
          AND A.[PlantID] = '00000001'
          AND (
               (A.Widget_Date &gt;= @Start_Date AND @End_Date IS NULL)
            OR (A.Widget_Datet &lt;= @End_Date AND @Start_Date IS NULL)
            OR (A.Widget_Date &gt;= @Start_Date AND A.Widget_Date &lt;= @End_Date)
            OR (@Start_Date IS NULL AND @End_Date IS NULL)


GROUP BY  M.[MonthName], M.MonthID 
ORDER BY  M.[MonthID]


Below is the execution plan for this query.

::UPDATE1::
I just inserted the names of the months into this table. I cannot change the remote table.

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Months](
    [MonthID] [smallint] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
    [MonthName] [varchar](25) NOT NULL,
 CONSTRAINT [PK_Months] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ([MonthID] ASC)
)
GO
INSERT INTO [dbo].[Months]
           ([MonthName])
     VALUES
           (&lt;MonthName, varchar(25),&gt;)
GO


The "widget" table has over 250 fields, that will take me much too long to anonymize.
Your code says you are doing a LEFT OUTER JOIN, but are you really? Your very first WHERE clause (as well as each that follow) filters rows for inclusion from the outer table:

WHERE     (A.[Operator_Name] LIKE '%'+ @OName +'%')


This turns your LEFT OUTER JOIN into an INNER JOIN, whether you meant it or not. Perhaps you meant to move those filters to the ON clause.

Of course I would probably remove the non-sargeable MONTH() function from the JOIN, since this is going to force a complete scan on the remote table, and write it this way instead - also eliminating the join to your local months table:

DECLARE 
  @OName      VARCHAR(50) = 'John', 
  @Start_Date DATE = NULL,--'20120101', -- use safe date formats 
  @End_Date   DATE = '20121231'; -- use semi-colons

-- deal with NULLs here so the query is simpler:

SELECT @Start_Date = COALESCE(@Start_Date, '20010101'),
       @End_Date   = COALESCE(@End_Date, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP);

;WITH n(n) AS 
(
  -- get the # of months you need instead of relying on your Connector table:
  SELECT TOP (DATEDIFF(MONTH, @Start_Date, @End_Date)+1) Number
    FROM master..spt_values
    WHERE [type] = N'P' AND Number &gt;= 0
    ORDER BY Number
), m(m) AS
(
  -- convert those to months:
  SELECT DATEADD(MONTH, n, DATEADD(MONTH, DATEDIFF(MONTH, 0, @Start_Date), 0))
  FROM n
)
SELECT 
  m.m, 
  MonthName = DATENAME(MONTH, m.m),
  [Widget Count] = COUNT(w.Widget_ID)
FROM m
LEFT OUTER JOIN [Server].[Database].dbo.Widget AS w -- meaningful alias
ON 
  w.Widget_Date &gt;= m.m
  AND w.Widget_Date &lt; DATEADD(MONTH, 1, m.m) -- open-ended date range query
  AND w.Operator_Name LIKE '%' + @OName + '%'
GROUP BY m.m
ORDER BY m.m;


Just ignore the m column in the output (you can't order by it without including it in the output, and it doesn't make sense to order by the name).

Another suggestion: don't use 'single quotes' as alias delimiters. Forms of this are deprecated and it also makes column alias look like string literals. Use [square brackets] instead.