The Pittsburgh Penguins were flat for a majority of the night, but Casey DeSmith put on his best performance of the year.
PITTSBURGH - Heading into their bye week, the Pittsburgh Penguins were struggling and their goaltending wasn’t doing them any favors.
Tristan Jarry suffered another injury, forcing the Penguins to utilize Casey DeSmith as a temporary starter for the second time this season.
DeSmith hasn’t been useful for a majority of the season, but he needed to come up huge in the first game back from break.
The Penguins knew it wasn’t going to be an easy contest, facing off against the defending Stanley Cup Champions, but for a while it seemed DeSmith was the only one to show up.
Through the first 11 minutes of the game, the Colorado Avalanche were the only ones to get a shot on goal, and they were peppering DeSmith.
The first period ended with the Avalanche up in shots 13-6; they more than doubled their shot count to 29 after two.
DeSmith was able to stand tall, however, and only allow a single goal through regulation and an overtime period.
The overtime saw the Penguins kill an entire penalty before Kris Letang buried the winner, and DeSmith had to come up with more big saves.
“I thought we did a great job keeping them to the outside,” DeSmith said. “They had some one-timers, obviously, but we kept them out of the middle. That’s my job to stop those ones, and thankfully I did.”
DeSmith finished the game with 41 saves which is a season high for him in a win; he’s hit 41 one other time in an overtime loss to the Detroit Red Wings and made 43 in a shootout loss to the Washington Capitals.
“Case is a real capable goaltender,” head coach Mike Sullivan said. “He gave us an opportunity to get points tonight. He held us in early in the game when we were getting outplayed.”
The Penguins didn’t do much to support him on the score sheet by only scoring two goals through 63 minutes, but thankfully DeSmith brought his A-game.
DeSmith has still had a volatile season and this one performance doesn’t mitigate that reality.
However, it does show that until Tristan Jarry is ready to go, DeSmith might still have what it takes to help as a temporary starter.
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