Penguins to start goaltender Casey DeSmith against Panthers

SUNRISE, Fla. – Penguins backup goaltender Casey DeSmith is slated to make his season debut on Thursday in a road contest against the Florida Panthers.

Coach Mike Sullivan announced DeSmith’s status.

This will be DeSmith’s first game of consequence since he suffered a season-ending groin injury late in the 2020-21 season. DeSmith last played in a 7-2 road loss to the Philadelphia Flyers on May 3. He left that contest after the second period due to his ailment.

Last season, DeSmith appeared in 20 games and had an 11-7-0 record along with a 2.54 goals against average, a .917 save percentage and two shutouts.

During the preseason, DeSmith played in three games and had a 1-1-0 record as well as a 2.71 goals against average and a .905 save percentage.

Guentzel also to debut

Sullivan also confirmed all-star forward Jake Guentzel will make his season debut. He missed the team’s season-opening 6-2 road loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning as a result of testing positive for covid-19 during the preseason.

Guentzel figures to return to the team’s top line and top power-play unit based on Wednesday’s practice at the FLA Live Arena.

During that session, the team’s lines and pairs were:

59 Jake Guentzel – 77 Jeff Carter – 17 Bryan Rust

16 Jason Zucker – 9 Evan Rodrigues – 42 Kasperi Kapanen

23 Brock McGinn – 53 Teddy Blueger – 43 Danton Heinen

49 Dominik Simon – 11 Brian Boyle – 18 Sam Lafferty

8 Brian Dumoulin – 58 Kris Letang

28 Marcus Pettersson – 6 John Marino

52 Mark Friedman – 2 Chad Ruhwedel

The top power-play unit included Carter, Guentzel, Kapanen, Letang and Rust. The second unit involved Marino, Pettersson, Rodrigues, Simon and Zucker.

Per Sullivan, forward Zach Aston-Reese, Sidney Crosby and Mike Matheson will remain out of the lineup.

Aston-Reese remains on the NHL’s covid-19 protocol list. Crosby is still rehabilitating from offseason surgery on his left wrist. Matheson is considered “day to day” due to undisclosed injury.

According to Sullivan, all three players skated in the morning at FLA Live Arena.

The rest of the team canceled its morning skate and got in a workout on the beach in Fort Lauderdale.

Lafferty finds some rare offense

The Penguins’ second goal during Tuesday’s win was scored by Boyle. It came off a sharp pass from the right wing boards by linemate Sam Lafferty who slipped the puck behind Lightning defenseman Zach Bogosian and allowed Boyle to skate in for a fairly easy goal.

In 34 games last season, Lafferty was limited to a mere six assists. In fact, he played the most games in the NHL last season among forwards who did not score a goal.

Regardless, Sullivan suspects there is an untapped offensive component to Lafferty’s game. After all, he posted a respectable 13 points (six goals, seven assists) in 50 games as a rookie in 2019-20.

“Sam has really good raw talent,” Sullivan said. “He’s a good puck handler, he can make passes, he has decent vision, he sees the ice well. When he’s at his best, he’s really a north-south player that can utilize his speed then he just has to be calculated with his decision-making. That was a terrific pass to Brian Boyle (on Tuesday). It was a huge goal for us. He’s certainly capable of those types of plays. I thought that was Sam’s best game that he’s played for us in quite some time. He was a guy, when he was on the ice, you noticed him. His speed was evident. His physicality was evident. Then he made a couple of plays through the course of the game offensively. He had an impact on the game, shift in and shift out.

“That’s really what our expectation is and that’s the conversation we’ve had with Sam here the last couple of seasons.”

McGinn has strong debut

In his first game as a member of the Penguins on Tuesday, forward Brock McGinn played as advertised. That’s to say he was physical as he led the team with four hits. And he was stout defensively with a team-best three blocked shots.

As the Penguins’ most notable offseason addition, there were high expectations for McGinn and he met them through all of one contest.

“That’s the type of game we (expected) when we signed him,” Sullivan said. “He was at his best the other night. He was another guy, you notice him. He doesn’t make game-breaking plays but he’s hard to play against. He’s gritty, he’s good on the boards, he blocks shots, he’s physical when he has the opportunity. He’s also a guy that has good awareness, he’s got great recognition skills defensively. We’re going to need him in that situation. That’s one of the reasons why we put him on a line with Teddy. That line could certainly be a line that we utilize against other team’s top players, put them in defensive zone starts and things of that nature. Brock is a guy who strengthens that aspect of the game.”

Panthers to start Bobrovsky

The Panthers are scheduled to start goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky. Last season he appeared in 31 games and had a 19-8-2 record, a 2.91 goals against average and a a .906 save percentage.

Florida’s projected lines and pairings are:

23 Carter Verhaeghe - 16 Aleksander Barkov - 13 Sam Reinhart

11 Jonathan Huberdeau - 9 Sam Bennett - 74 Owen Tippett

77 Frank Vatrano - 15 Anton Lundell - 70 Patric Hornqvist

94 Ryan Lomberg - 19 Joe Thornton - 10 Anthony Duclair

52 MacKenzie Weegar - 5 Aaron Ekblad

42 Gustav Forsling - 7 Radko Gudas

8 Matt Kiersted - 62 Brandon Montour

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