NEW YORK — Casey DeSmith has to tend goal as he’s never tended goal in his life.
That’s all.
No, really, that’s the totality of it.
All that’s needed from the Penguins’ distant backup to Tristan Jarry in this first-round Stanley Cup playoff series against the Rangers that gets going here Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden — 7:08 p.m. faceoff — is nothing less than fending off one of the NHL’s fastest and most furious offenses and, oh, yeah, outperforming a counterpart, Igor Shesterkin, a legit candidate for the Hart Trophy as the league’s MVP.
Not that there’s any pressure or anything on a guy who broke into the professional ranks as No. 3 on the Wheeling Nailers’ depth chart.
"Yeah, it's exciting," DeSmith would say Monday after the team's final pre-playoff practice back in Cranberry. "It's exciting to get to the end here and start playing some exciting hockey. I'm excited to play my first playoff game."
Funny, he didn't look or sound excited. There was a slight smile, but I'm talking tone, brevity, all that.
And I'm sharing this in the good way. Because that's promising.
Still, he's a .915 lifetime save percentage guy, a tick above his .914 from this season. Neither is terrible. Neither is great. And he'll have to be the latter to outperform the counterpart, whose .935 was a full 10 points higher than that of the next-closest competitor, the Islanders' Ilya Sorokin at .925.
I could do this all day ...
Rickard Rakell, my choice for the preemptive Jeff Carter Award as most pleasant playoff surprise, hasn't participated beyond the regular season since 2018 since the Ducks didn't, either. Now, he did have seven goals in 15 playoff games the previous spring, but we're going even further back. He'd have to hit a level he hasn't had a chance to hit in forever.
Carter, the actual winner of his own nonexistent award last spring, hasn't escaped the first round since 2014, the last time he raised the Cup with the Kings. That's a team thing, but I'm just saying. He's vital. There's no scoring depth, no consistent shooting threat in the bottom-six, if he isn't it.
Mike Matheson, who stacks up as the ideal wild card on a back end that'll have to spearhead smooth transitions to counter the Rangers' greatest weapon, has one playoff point in seven NHL seasons, and that's primarily because he's been in 13 whole playoff games. A year ago against the Islanders, he laid six eggs on the scoresheets.
These aren't the main guys, but they're pivotal guys, swing votes, the kind necessary to pull off an upset. And honestly, once we get past them, we're into a whole lot of Kasperi Kapanen, Danton Heinen and Marcus Pettersson, and they're not about to alter any equation.
Thing is, this trend ascends to the main guys, too ...
Remember when Jake Guentzel burst to one of the great career playoff starts in NHL history, with 23 goals in 37 games?
In the three years that followed, he's got three goals and three assists over 14 games. And the Penguins, of course, were out in a hurry all three times. That's not a coincidence. He's now regularly the team's top goal-scorer, and he hasn't scored goals when they've been needed most. He'd have to do something he hasn't done ... my God, since the Flyers were competitive.
"The last couple years haven't gone our way," Guentzel would say Monday, speaking of the top line. "So I think we're just excited to have a new opportunity. And we know, when we're at our best, we can be one of the top lines in the league. We're excited about the challenge."
Kris Letang, in those same 14 games, had a goal, an assist and a minus-7. He's now 35, maybe not as able as he was in the past to find that extra gear in May when he's logged 25-plus minutes through a regular season. That's a long way from San Jose.
Bryan Rust, in those same 14 games, had the same three goals, three assists, minus-9.
Sidney Crosby, same span, three goals, three assists, minus-6.
I'm not kidding. Even Sid.
Evgeni Malkin, with 12 games in that span, two goals, seven assists, minus-6.
The Core can't carry this team anymore. That's not news. They'll still have their highs, as we witnessed over this past regular season. But they're now renting, not buying, when they're up there.
The Supporting Core, or however one might characterize Guentzel and Rust within that hierarchy, can't compensate for the Core. Or they don't get enough reciprocated from the Core to be difference-makers, as they both once were this time of year.
Look, it's a team game. I get that. In fact, hockey's more of a team game than most, I'd posit, with its reliance on chain-reaction strategy rather than scripts. If one cog's misfiring, the whole engine goes kablooey.
That continues to be Mike Sullivan's emphasis.
"We feel like we have a competitive hockey team," he'd reiterate Monday. "I really like the group of guys that we have. They're terrific people, first and foremost. We have a wealth of experience. There's a lot of Stanley Cup rings in that locker room. And I believe these guys can draw on those experiences to help us. Having said that, we're going against a real good opponent. We understand the challenge in front of us. And the most important thing is that we've got to go out and earn it."
That sounds awesome. But the Penguins' own team game, independent of experience or rings or want-to, went missing around mid-January, never to return. Maybe it's because some of the secondary players lost confidence -- hello, Evan Rodrigues -- and put undue pressure on the main guys, the power play and, of course, Jarry to do all the lifting. But maybe, also, it's that Sullivan's 200-foot, full-throttle, in-your-face system tends to look a whole lot sharper in an October opener than it does amid the showers and flowers of the real season.
Oh, there've been times it's popped back to life, most often following an extended break. So there's a reasonable chance, I'd say, that Game 1 might be the Penguins' strongest in this regard. They'll have their fire, their energy and, yeah, their legs. But the playoffs are defined by attrition, and this episode of attrition, based on regular-season precedent, shouldn't take long to arrive.
Jarry was the hope. He really was.
Now, part of me hates to say that because it feels like I'm assigning an excuse in advance. I won't do that. The aforementioned individuals, plus Sullivan and Ron Hextall for the collective component, will have plenty of hard questions to answer after this series if there's a fourth straight first-round exit. That's as it should be.
But that can be addressed in the same breath that the reality's faced that Jarry was what held all this together for the five months before breaking his foot. He was his team's premier player, and not just because he's at the most important position. His consistency was unmatched, his bar untouched by anyone, including Crosby or Guentzel.
He was needed to instill that swag the team's lacked without him. He was needed to be that singular X factor that no one on the Core can be anymore. He was needed to make up for a defense that isn't all that slick when it comes to simple defending in the defensive zone, notably at the net-front.
He was needed.
I'll say it again: They can do this. The Penguins aren't incapable. They've beaten better teams than the Rangers throughout the season, and they did beat the Rangers, lest we forget, in the first of the four head-to-heads with precisely the type of effort that represents their Grade-A game. What's more, the Rangers' principal weakness -- they aren't exactly awesome in their defensive zone, either -- would dovetail wonderfully with the Penguins' greatest strength ... when they can muster an energetic forecheck.
But here again, the list of individuals who need to rise above recent norms ... man, it's long.
Sorry, I don’t have much. I know this isn't what anyone who follows the franchise would want to read a few hours from faceoff. But there was so very much to like about where this team was headed, and most of that, I feel, was undone by failing to create a supporting cast through acquisitions or promotions/usage of prospects in Wilkes-Barre, and the rest was undone by Anders Lee crashing Jarry's crease on the 14th of April.
Imagine the Islanders knocking out the Penguins yet again, huh?
In this case, it'll still be New York ... but Rangers in five.