With the likes of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, James Neal, Chris Kunitz, Jarome Iginla, and Brendan Morrow, the Pittsburgh Penguins are an embarrassment of riches both up front and even on the back end. However, this post-season it has not just been these guys stepping up in Pittsburgh’s seven victories.
Penguins’ netminder Tomas Vokoun has been overlooked this post-season. As the Penguins put the puck in net with relative ease, their goaltending is often not the focal point of their game.
With that said, one must take a look back to their round against the New York Islanders. After four games, the teams were tied at two wins apiece and that was mainly because of Marc-Andre Fleury’s struggles between the pipes.
In four games this postseason, Fleury was 2-2 with an abysmal 3.40 GAA and a more than subpar .891 save percentage. Fleury was scrambling too much in and out of his crease, overplaying shots and looked like a goaltender that was struggling to make saves on a consistent basis.
Vokoun, the team’s back-up netminder, has come in and changed all of that. In his first game of the post-season since 2007 with the Nashville Predators, Vokoun made 31 saves for his second career playoff shutout in Game 5.
For a goaltender that had not played in a post-season game in six years, getting a shutout in your first start is pretty remarkable. After that game, Vokoun pretty much said that to Toronto Sun and QMI Agency hockey scribe Chris Stevenson.
"It feels obviously good. It’s been longer than I remember to be in a playoff game," said Vokoun, who played his first post-season game with the Predators.
"I was a little bit nervous to be honest, the whole day. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t. I haven’t played a long in playoffs so you kind of, it’s hard to remember seven years ago what to expect, but I got couple of fortunate bounces."
The following game, Vokoun stopped 35 of 38 shots as the Penguins won 4-3 in overtime to advance to the second round. It may not have been pretty, but Penguins’ coach Dan Bylsma told Ron Cook of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Vokoun was more than solid for his hockey club.
“I thought he played an outstanding game,” Bylsma added. “He was strong again.”
Vokoun took his strong play against the Islanders to the team’s second-round series against the Senators. It showed in Game 1 when he stopped 35 of 36 shots.
Much like he did against the Islanders, Bylsma thought Vokoun got the job done against the Senators in Game 1, which is something he expressed to NHL.com writer Shawn Roarke after the game.
"He played very good again tonight," Bylsma said. "They draw even in the first on a play from behind the goal line, but from that point in time there was a lot of good plays [from Vokoun]. They had some flurries on him and I thought he was real strong as the game went on."
Even Iginla was impressed by Vokoun’s play and has been since Vokoun came into the series against the Islanders.
"Voky, since he’s come in, he’s been great," Iginla said. "You can tell he’s feeling good and I think it’s definitely a good situation to have as a team when you have two confident goaltenders like we have."
Two games later, the Penguins find themselves up 2-1 in the series. The one blemish was a 2-1 double-overtime loss in which Vokoun made 46 saves.
The Penguins may be filled with offensive stars and snipers, but Vokoun deserves some credit for where the Penguins are this post-season.
