A Surfeit of Penguins’ Goalies?

First of all, I want to apologize for the title of this article and my opting to delve deep into my lexicon for that arcane word “surfeit”. Among my many quirks is a predilection for old time TV and there was an old BBC TV series called the Avengers that used that sesquipedalian word, “A Surfeit of H2O”. I’ll save you the trouble of looking it up, if that is what you were about to do, surfeit simply means an excess of; in this case an excess of Goalies.

Thinking back to the 2016 NHL draft, our Pittsburgh Penguins drafted a highly touted Swedish Goalie Filip Gustavsson. At that time, the Black and Gold still boasted Marc-Andre Feury and Matt Murray on the big club. In Wilkes Barre – Scranton (WBS) Tristan Jarry honed his trade. Casey DeSmith was Jarry’s partner in crime on the Penguins affiliate, but was only signed to an AHL contract.

Roughly a year later (June 21, 2017), GM Jim Rutherford paid the Vegas Golden Knights a draft pick to take Fleury in the Expansion draft rather than risk losing luminaries like Connor Sheary, Scott Wilson, or Tom Kuhnhackl.

Only 8 months later (February 23, 2018), Rutherford traded Gustavsson to the Ottawa Senators in what some consider one of the worst trades the team has made in recent years. Now the team was reduced to only Murray, Jarry, and DeSmith.

Over this past off season, Rutherford started to try and restock a severely depleted cupboard. He signed Finnish prospect standout Emil Larmi (June 2, 2019). Larmi is possessed of top athleticism and quickness. He posted good numbers for 3 seasons for HPK of the Finnish league Liiga. Last season he finished with a Goals Against Average (GAA) of
1.94 in the regular season and 1.72 in the playoffs with Save Percentages (Sv%) of 0.909 and 0.932 over that time, respectively.

As this regular season approached the major discussion around the Penguins’ Goaltending situation center on whether or not the team should trade Jarry or DeSmith to get in under the Cap, since Murray, Jarry, and DeSmith all had to clear waivers to be sent down to WBS. The Rationale that the team trade either Jarry or DeSmith was that it would be better to trade one of them rather than lose one of them without compensation to the waiver wire. Rutherford gambled and was able to sneak DeSmith through waivers.

Most recently I have been thinking about the next looming Expansion Draft. Part of the problem with the last Expansion Draft that cost the team Fleury (and stupidly a draft pick) was that each team was required to make at least one Goalie with some professional experience available to the draft. Now that Rutherford has gotten away with sending DeSmith down to WBS, I would think that it is best not to tinker with the position. That is to say, it may be best not to add a Goalie, as a sweetener to any trade, to entice teams to take a bad contract.

With Jarry and DeSmith both available to leave exposed, the Penguins would still have at least have 1 quality back-up.

It may also be best not to bring up DeSmith and then have to risk putting him on waivers to send back down unless it becomes extremely critical. Unless Murray or Jarry incur a long term injury, it may be best to call Larmi (he is waivers exempt) up to serve as the emergency, 1 or 2 game, back-up rather than ending up next season with only 1 experienced NHL goalie in the organization.

June 21, 2017 and the headiness of thinking we had more than enough goalies wasn’t that long ago. I miss those days.