Casey DeSmith joins a long List of Pittsburgh Penguins backups to play in the postseason.
The Pittsburgh Penguins opened up their 2022 Stanley Cup Playoff schedule last night against the New York Rangers. After spending the entire season without icing a fully healthy lineup, the Penguins are missing only starting goalie Tristan Jarry and forward Jason Zucker as the postseason begins. In fact, it seems as if the Penguins will have to advance past the first round in order to see Jarry return from the broken foot he sustained back on April 14th.
Luckily, the Penguins are no stranger to playing their backups when the lights shine the brightest.
Back in the 1991 Stanley Cup Playoffs, Penguins starting goalie Tom Barrasso went down with an injury in the middle of their first round series against the New Jersey Devils. The Pens trailed the series 3-2, and faced elimination on the road without Barrasso as well as Hall of Fame defenseman Paul Coffey. Backup goalie Frank Pietrangelo stepped in and early on in Game 5 made a play that to this day is known in Pittsburgh as “The Save”.
Pietrangelo went on to backstop the Penguins to a 4-3 win in New Jersey. He then shut out the Devils in Game 7, making 27 saves, to help the Penguins advance to the second round of the playoffs.
Pietrangelo also played the Penguins into a 1-1 series tie against the Capitals before Barrasso returned from injury.
Fast forward to the 2013 Stanley Cup Playoffs and you’ll find another instance where the Penguins were forced to rely on their backup to make a deep playoff run.
This is unique to the other instances because Penguins starter Marc-Andre Fleury wasn’t injured, but instead vastly underperforming. With the Penguins tied 2-2 with the Islanders in the first round, Fleury had allowed 14 goals in three games after shutting out the Islanders in Game 1 of the series. Penguins head coach Dan Bylsma turned to backup Thomas Vokoun who proceeded to win the next four games he started, extending into their second round series against the Ottawa Senators.
Vokoun finished that playoff season 6-5 with a .933 save percentage and a 2.01 goals allowed average. The Penguins were swept out of the Eastern Conference Finals by the Boston Bruins, but the story was far from Vokoun in that series. The Pens failed to score against Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask, only notching two goals in the entire four game series.
Both Pietrangelo and Vokoun came in midway through the first round, but in 2016 Jeff Zatkoff a.k.a “Mr. Game 1” was thrust into action despite being the Penguins third string goalie the entire second half of the regular season.
Matt Murray was injured in the final game of the regular season against the Philadelphia Flyers, and Marc-Andre Fleury went down a few weeks earlier with a concussion and still wasn’t cleared to return. Zatkoff made several big saves early on in Game 1, keeping it scoreless until Patric Hornqvist was able to get one past Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist in the final minute of the first period.
The Penguins never surrendered the lead from there and took Game One 5-2. Zatkoff and the Penguins lost Game 2, but Murray returned in Game 3 to lead the Penguins to their fourth Stanley Cup.
As of now, there is no timetable for Jarry’s return to the lineup, but considering the type of injury it seems like we won’t see him until the very end of the first round at the earliest. Casey DeSmith has been solid since suffering from a rough start to the season going 11-3-4 since December 6th with a .924 save percentage, and a 2.23 goals allowed average.
The Penguins will need him to perform at the top of his game the rest of this series, but it doesn’t hurt that he’s playing behind a Pittsburgh Penguins team that has been in similar positions before. As ‘Badger’ Bob Johnson said back in 1991, “We’re still in the hunt, that’s where we want to be”.
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