Penguins goaltender Casey DeSmith misses practice due to injury
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Pittsburgh Penguins backup goaltender Casey DeSmith missed practice at PPG Paints Arena on Tuesday with an undisclosed injury.
His status for Wednesday’s home game against the Calgary Flames at PPG Paints Arena is not clear, but coach Mike Sullivan labeled DeSmith’s absence from Tuesday’s practice session as precautionary.
During Sunday’s 5-3 road win against the Chicago Blackhawks, DeSmith made 29 saves on 32 shots.
In eight games this season, DeSmith has a 3-4-1 record, a 2.88 goals-against average and a .909 save percentage.
Hennes gets promoted
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The Penguins promoted Ty Hennes to assistant coach on Tuesday.
Hennes had served as the team’s skating and skills development coach the previous four seasons.
It is unclear how Hennes’ duties will change in his new role or if there will be a replacement for his previous role. In his former capacity, Hennes was routinely involved in helping injured players regain their conditioning as well as all practice sessions.
Four-on-four work
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Less than 48 hours after the Penguins gave up a four-on-four goal in Sunday’s game, they spent some of Tuesday’s practice focusing on that scenario.
“Some of the strategies (for something) that doesn’t happen very often anymore,” Penguins defenseman Marcus Pettersson said in explaining what went into Monday’s four-on-four drills. “To (iron) out some details. We went through it a lot in training camp, but we got punished for it in Chicago.”
Pettersson was caught in no-man’s land on the sequence that led to Blackhawks forward Patrick Kane scoring his team’s second goal during a somewhat rare four-on-four sequence in the second period. Off a cycle from the Penguins’ right corner, Blackhawks forward Jonathan Toews set up Kane for score from right above the crease. Pettersson left Kane to defend Toews, only to watch the two connect on a pass setting up the goal.
“It’s right in between a three-on-three and a five-on-five, right?” Pettersson said. “Usually, with three-on-three, you go more man-on-man. But in four-on-four, it’s the same but it’s not. It’s just strategies that we talk about with how we talk out there or communicate when we want to stay with a guy or switch. It’s good to go over those details and kind of keep everybody on the same page.”
The need to practice four-on-four scenarios was on Sullivan’s to-do list for a while, but with limited practice time, it wasn’t a leading priority, at least not until they gave up that goal to Kane.
“It’s very different,” Sullivan said in describing how four-on-four is different from five-on-five play. “It all depends on the system that you play. There’s a few teams that play hard man-on-man five-on-five. For those teams, it’s probably not dissimilar. It’s hard to play any zone systems.
“The less bodies you have on the ice, the more difficult it becomes to play more zone systems versus man-on-man. There’s always elements of man-on-man associated with defending. At the end of the day, it really boils down to that at some particular point in time. There are support mechanisms built in place in certain zone systems that can be beneficial. But the less guys you have on the ice, the more difficult it is because you lose opportunities for layers or numbers. There is a difference in how you defend four-on-four (or) three-on-three versus five-on-five. It happens enough in a game that it’s an area where we felt we need to continue to get better at it.
“That’s one of the reasons why we practiced it today. We’ll continue to look for opportunities to try to get them (repetitions) in practice. The hard part as a coaching staff is that you’re always trying to prioritize the valuable practice time that you have. When you look at the nature of the schedule, sometimes you’re playing so many games, the schedule gets condensed. You don’t have an opportunity maybe to get to certain things that you’d like to just by the reality of the logistics. That’s something that’s been on our radar for a little while as a coaching staff.”