Don't Panic! Regarding the Penguins Goalies

So a panic has begun to spread amongst Penguins fans and it regards an injury. Crosby, Malkin, Neal, and Letang are all still healthy. So why the panic? Backup goalie Tomas Vokoun is hurt, after having a procedure to remove blood clot in his pelvis this weekend. He’s out indefinitely. He had a similar problem back in April 2006, and wasn’t cleared to play until July of that year. So where does this leave the Penguins? Well starting goalie Marc-Andre Fleury is healthy. Remember this is the Marc-Andre Fleury that’s been a goalie full of holes in the playoffs. Despite that, everyone seems to forget he’s a pretty solid goalie during the regular season. The past three regular seasons he has a .916 SP and a 2.36 GAA, both respectable numbers. I’m not gonna bring up his post-season numbers, but let’s just say they’re not good. But during the regular season, Fleury can handle being a number 1 goalie. Remember, Vokoun, who’s 37, was set to be the backup this year. If Vokoun’s out for three months like the last time he had this injury, that’s late-December/early-January, in plenty of time for Fleury’s playoff meltdown.

With Vokoun out, Pittsburgh’s goalie depth now includes Jett Zatkoff, Eric Hartzell, and Jeff Deslauriers who just signed an AHL tryout. Of the three, Deslauriers is the only one with any NHL experience. Zatkoff is a decent minor-league goalie with 3 straight 20 win seasons. Hartzell is in his first year of pro after playing 4 years of college hockey with Quinnipiac, who were the number 1 rated team in NCAA last year and lost in the championship to Yale. Even with one of these three guys playing backup, the Penguins don’t look terrible in that position to other teams. Boston has Chad Johnson set in that role, he’s only played 10 NHL games. Behind Sergei Bobrovsky in Columbus is Curtis McElhinney (69 games) who is currently also injured. The Jackets other goalie are Jeremy Smith (0 games) and Mike McKenna (17 games). The Predators are going with Carter Hutton (1 game), behind Pekka Rinne, while Eddie Lack (0 games) is set to back up Roberto Luongo in Vancouver. These goalies all have similar numbers to Fleury the past 3 seasons – Luongo .918 SP, 2.36 GAA; Rinne .921 SP, 2.31 GAA; Rask .925 SP, 2.24 GAA; Bobrovsky .915 SP, 2.54 GA – with Rask and Bobrovsky having played much less than the others. So the Penguins shouldn’t fret just because their proven backup could be out for a while. They’re in the same situation as a number of other teams.