SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Things seemed to be shaping up for Tristan Jarry to make his return to the crease Tuesday night when the Penguins visited the Sharks at SAP Center, but it ended up being Casey DeSmith between the pipes for his seventh consecutive start.
DeSmith, who entered with a 9-11-4 record and .903 save percentage, has been wildly inconsistent this season. Not in all, but in most of his starts, it's seemed as though he's either lights-out or ... well, getting lit up.
After allowing three goals on 15 shots and getting yanked in favor of Dustin Tokarski Saturday night in Los Angeles, DeSmith needed a bounce-back performance in a big way.
He delivered.
En route to a 3-1 victory, he stopped 38 of 39 shots on goal, quieting the loud -- and sometimes obnoxious -- crowd suggesting he doesn't belong anywhere near the NHL.
"I thought Case was really good," Mike Sullivan said. "He made some big saves for us. Real solid in there. I thought he looked confident right from the drop of the puck."
The Penguins didn't exactly come out of the gates with their best, but DeSmith was up for everything the Sharks sent his way as they controlled considerable stretches of the first period.
Really, the Penguins didn't have their best defensive effort for most of the game. It didn't matter much at all because of the way DeSmith performed:
"I think we can do a better job with our commitment to five-man defense in all three zones," Sullivan said. "We didn’t manage the puck really well in the high ice in the offensive zone, and I thought we fed their transition game a little bit. And that’s an area where I think we can get better. Those types of chances that you give up in those situations tend to be high-quality."
Across the board during all situations, here's what the Sharks were able to generate against the Penguins:
• 58 shot attempts
• 32 scoring chances
• 18 high-danger chances
• 3.84 expected goals
And here's a map of the Sharks' unblocked shot locations, scaled to their expected goal value, for good measure:
Evolving-Hockey.com
Squares are scaled to their expected goal (xG) value. Larger = higher probability of becoming a goal.
That's certainly not close to the Penguins' weakest defensive performance this season, but it's also not nothing. I don't think it's a reach to suggest they wouldn't have had quite the favorable outcome if not for DeSmith. He was their best player not named Sidney Crosby in this one.
I asked DeSmith if the game was a statement from him.
"You can call it that if you want," he said with a smile. "I try and go out and play like that every game, and I think I have the capabilities. Some nights go better than others."
Perhaps the most impressive part about DeSmith's 38-save victory is that he was tested in a variety of ways, yet had an answer for everything except a late-game bull rush up the ice from Timo Meier, the biggest fish in the NHL's trade deadline pond.
Here's DeSmith making a bang-bang save in tight on Meier earlier:
And another in the third period, this one from further out but right in the middle of the slot:
When DeSmith is struggling, it's not uncommon for him to lose his net. Essentially, he'll be off his mark and leave one part of the net or another open with plenty of room to shoot at. As an undersized goalie at 6 feet, 181 pounds, that can spiral in a hurry. But against the Sharks, DeSmith was strikingly in control of his body and movement, and also looked to perfectly teeter the line between taking shooters' angles away while making them think there's something there.
Another one of his third-period saves, this one on Logan Couture:
"This was a big game for us," DeSmith said. "I was really happy to get the call tonight, and even happier that I could contribute to an important win."
With the victory, DeSmith has improved to 10-11-4 this season with a .907 save percentage, 3.21 goals against average and 5.72 goals saved above expected based on the quality of chances he's faced.
I'm going to let you in on a little secret, in case you haven't figured it out already among all the game-to-game reactionary analysis (which everyone is guilty of): DeSmith is a perfectly fine NHL backup.
But that's the key, he's just a backup. Nothing more. Nothing special. Nothing to hang your hat on. But he's fine.
The problem's that Jarry hasn't been healthy and, instead of facing weaker opponents once a week or even more infrequently, DeSmith's out there every night. Of course he's going to get exposed playing every night. He's a backup!
Yeah, sure, it'd be great to have some sort of Marc-Andre Fleury, Matt Murray tandem in which both goalies are true No. 1s. But guess what, DeSmith counts only $1.8 million against the salary cap. The Penguins do not have the luxury of sinking money into another mid-to-high-end goalie.
They just don't.
The Penguins are actually getting quite a bit of value out of DeSmith's contract based on ... oh, I don't know, the seemingly tons of goalies costing their teams more money with worse raw and advanced metrics.
Want me to blow your mind? Over the past three seasons, DeSmith ranks 14th among 56 NHL goalies to have faced 2000 unblocked shot attempts with 9.06 goals saved above expected. He ranks 18th among the same group with a .910 save percentage.
I'll add the caveat that, for much of that time, he enjoyed easier matchups and didn't have to worry about being the guy. But none of this is even remotely close to suggesting he's some terrible backup that needs to be upgraded upon.
DeSmith's just about right for the Penguins. It would be nice, though, if he finds a little more consistency. Then again, the goaltending position is one of the most volatile in all of sports.
"Guy works so hard and does a lot for this team," Jake Guentzel said of DeSmith. "To see him get rewarded like that is special, and we’re happy for him."
