The Penguins’ Problem Between the Pipes

With the NHL’s Trade Deadline less than a month away, the Pittsburgh Penguins come out of the All-Star break with several needs, but none is more pressing than in goal.

Starter Tristan Jarry has not been able to find a way to stay healthy for much of the season and backup Casey DeSmith has shown little to prove he’s capable of carrying the load during Jarry’s frequent absences.

DeSmith, who was last seen allowing five goals to the lowly San Jose Sharks, comes out of the All-Star break with an underwhelming 7-10-4 record. His .901 save percentage and 3.35 goals against average both rank last amongst qualifying Metropolitan division goaltenders.

Jarry, who has played well when available, has missed the last two weeks with an upper body injury and all but two games since the calendar turned to 2023. His latest injury is his fourth in the last ten months and durability has become a major concern.

Overall, the Penguins’ 3.01 goals against average ranks last amongst current Eastern Conference playoff teams and becomes even more problematic when you consider no team since the 2005-06 Carolina Hurricanes has gone on to win a Stanley Cup with a regular season goals against average above 2.90.

While those numbers take into account a Penguins’ team defense that does their goaltenders no favors with the substantial number of shots they allow, the tandem of Jarry and DeSmith has done little to inspire confidence in their ability to take a team down the stretch and deep into the playoffs.

For the last two years the Penguins have gone into the Playoffs relying on this pair and for two straight years they have been eliminated in the first round largely because of them.

Injuries to both Jarry and DeSmith completely derailed last year’s playoff series against the Rangers. Jarry missed all but the last game of the six-game series with a foot injury and DeSmith was lost for the remainder of the series after sustaining an injury in the second overtime of Game 1.

The year prior, in a series that saw the Penguins largely outplay the underdog Islanders, DeSmith was once again out with a groin injury and Jarry was easily the worst player on the ice allowing several soft goals in Game 1, committing a disastrous turnover in double overtime of Game 5, and allowing five goals on only 24 shots in Game 6 to finish the series with a paltry .888 save percentage.

It seems unfathomable to think General Manager Ron Hextall would once again take this aging roster into the postseason reliant on this tandem but his options to do otherwise are not great without mortgaging the teams already bleak looking post Crosby-Malkin future.

For starters, NHL teams seldom part with quality goaltending and when they do the price can be understandably steep while the return can be far from certain.

Last year’s deadline only saw one goaltender that would be considered a day one starter switch teams. In a salary dump, the Chicago Blackhawks traded pending free agent Marc-Andre Fleury and his seven-million-dollar salary to the Minnesota Wild for a conditional second round pick. Chicago retained half of the $7 million cap hit and Fleury went 9-2 down the stretch before being sat down in favor of Cam Talbot in the sixth and deciding game of the Wild’s first round loss to the St. Louis Blues.

While the 2021 deadline saw no notable goaltenders switch uniforms, the 2020 deadline saw only one. Once again it was a lowly Chicago team dumping a pending free agent’s salary in a three-team deal that, in a yet to be known twist of irony, sent Robert Lehner to Vegas as an insurance policy for the Knights then struggling starter, Marc-Andre Fleury.

Probably the most infamous move of a high caliber goaltender at the trade deadline in recent memory is the 2014 blockbuster that saw Buffalo trade 33-year-old, three-time Vezina winner Ryan Miller and agitator Steve Ott to St. Louis for the Blues then starting goaltender Jaroslav Halak, a 2015 first-round pick, a 2016 third-round pick, and two other lesser-known players. The massive haul paid by St. Louis to get Miller for a Stanley Cup run backfired when Miller went 3-8 down the stretch and 2-4 with a .897 save percentage in the playoffs as the Blues were eliminated in the first round by the Blackhawks.

While this year’s goaltending market seems to favor the buyer, the available options are still far from surefire.

The Penguins also find themselves limited in what they can offer in the form of young players and the amount of salary they can absorb.

Years of trading away high round draft picks for “win now” veterans and their offseason decision to re-sign several of their own high priced free agents has given them a salary bloated roster that leaves little to no available cap space. Any deal that they may be able to make will almost certainly require them to overpay either the team they acquire the player from or possibly a third team to retain a large portion of that players salary.

The second and overall more concerning result of all those years of parting with picks and young talent is the mostly barren cupboard of top-notch prospects currently coming through the organization. According to The Hockey Writers Midseason Rankings the Penguins currently have zero prospects in the NHL’s Top 100. This combined with the cap relief they will be asking for means acquiring any veteran netminder of substance will assuredly require the Penguins to further diminish the franchises already uncertain future by trading away one or more of their top picks in this year’s upcoming draft.

A shortsighted decision to overpay for much needed stability in net or anywhere else now in order to give a team that hasn’t won a playoff series since 2018 a far from guaranteed shot at a deep run must be weighed heavily against the further detriment it will certainly cause to the future of a franchise that is already bereft of young talent.

While it is an unenviable position that Hextall and the Penguins’ brass finds themselves in, it is a self-inflicted one.