Penguins A to Z: Goaltender Maxime Lagace served his purpose

With the Penguins in the midst of their offseason, the Tribune-Review is looking at all 48 players currently under NHL contracts to the organization in alphabetical order, from mid-level prospect Niclas Almari to top-six winger Jason Zucker.

Maxime Lagace

Position: Goaltender

Catches: Left

Age: 28

Height: 6-foot-2

Weight: 190 pounds

2020-21 NHL statistics: 1 game, 1-0-0 record, 0.00 goals-against average, 1.000 save percentage, 1 shutout

2020-21 AHL statistics: Nine games, 4-3-2 record, 2.30 goals-against average, .907 save percentage, zero shutouts

Contract: One-year, two-way contract with a salary cap hit of $700,000. Pending unrestricted free agent this offseason.

Acquired: Unrestricted free agent signing, Oct. 10, 2020

2020-21 season: Perhaps no role in the NHL was going to be impacted more by the rules and the league laid out to orchestrate the 2020-21 campaign during the unique circumstance of a global pandemic than the third goaltender.

All 31 active franchises were to keep a third goaltender on the practice squad. Typically, the player that inhabits that station is the top goaltender with each franchise’s American Hockey League affiliate. But given the very real possibility of teams dealing with multitudes of players being unavailable for health concerns — a possibility that became a reality for many teams this past season — the third goaltender was kind of in a “break glass in case of emergency” dynamic.

So that meant Maxime Lagace — one of the top goaltenders in the AHL with the Providence Bruins during the 2019-20 campaign — just wasn’t going to play that much, either at the NHL or AHL levels last season.

As it turned out, Lagace was involved in 14 different transactions by the Penguins this past season, being shuffled between the NHL roster, the taxi squad and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. In contrast, he appeared in only 10 professional games during the 2020-21 season.

On the scant occasions he did play, he was pretty sharp. In his season debut, he made 27 saves on 29 shots for Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in a 3-1 road loss to the Hershey Bears on Feb. 20.

Lagace did serve as the backup goaltender for the NHL club on five different occasions during the regular season when health matters briefly sidelined starter Tristan Jarry or backup Casey DeSmith.

Perhaps the most stirring moment of the Penguins’ 2020-21 campaign came in their season finale on May 8.

With DeSmith sidelined due to a core muscle injury and Jarry withheld as a precaution, Lagace made his Penguins debut. Appearing in his first NHL contest in over two years, Lagace recorded his first career shutout by making 29 saves in a 1-0 home win against the Buffalo Sabres that helped clinch the East Division title. Lagace also became the first goaltender in franchise history to record a shutout in his debut for the club.

In the postseason, with DeSmith still sidelined, Lagace served as Jarry’s backup for all six games of the Penguins’ first-round loss to the New York Islanders.

The future: Lagace is an unrestricted free agent and given his acumen at the AHL level, he’s always going to be in demand. NHL teams typically want a steady veteran presence on their AHL roster in net, even if just to platoon with or back up a rising prospect.

As for any future with the Penguins, there are much larger questions that need to be answered at the position than if Lagace will return. Given Jarry’s struggles in the playoffs, any decisions general manager Ron Hextall makes, such as possibly bringing on a more established NHL-caliber goaltender to challenge or replace Jarry, will obviously impact the organization’s depth in net from top to bottom.

Lagace served his purpose well this past season with the Penguins. But factors beyond his control will dictate where he plays next season.

Follow the Penguins all season long.