Penguins’ DeSmith is out and Larmi is in

Oops!

Apparently Casey DeSmith lost his passport, so he is not getting the call up from Wilkes Barre – Scranton (WBS).  Really?

Instead Emil Larmi was called up to back-up Matt Murray against the Montreal Canadiens tonight at 7:00pm

Anything is possible, but I can’t help wonder if this isn’t a case of Penguins Management thinking “Oh wait, this is not an emergency call-up, so we can’t shuttle DeSmith back down to WBS.” Maybe there really isn’t that impending trade that I mused about yesterday when the team announced the DeSmith call up. Maybe it really was a bit of a gaffe on management’s part, realized in the nick of time.

Regardless, Larmi will now be dressing for a game in his 3rd different league this season. After being demoted to WBS to start the season, Larmi started off his AHL season with a 30 save win performance against Binghamton for his 1st win, but then fell on some hard times after the next 4 games Larmi was 1-2-2 with a Goals Against Average (GAA) of 4.43 and Save Percentage (S%) of 0.861%. He was then sent down to the ECHL Wheeling Nailers and seems to have gotten his grove back on going 3-1-0 in 4 games with a GAA of 1.51 and a S% of 0.959.

Odds and Sods

In the same release as the Larmi’s call up it was noted that Jake Guentzel and Justin Schultz were placed on Injured Reserve (IR).

I would have thought that Guentzel’s IR was a given and almost immediate once surgery was going to be involved.

Schultz’s IR trip is retroactive to December 17th