Today's focus will not be the current Vezina winning goaltender, that was yesterday,
and it was Marc-Andre Fleury. Today will focus on another UFA who has plenty of NHL experience being a competent player, but one who doesn’t exactly jump off the page. The goaltender for today is Petr Mrazek.

Mrazek’s very early sample in the NHL with Detroit was strong. He started with a .918 save percentage as a backup with 29 games played in 2014-15 and then followed that up with 54 games of .921. Off and running to a great run as an NHL starter, right? Well, not so much as we know with goaltenders they find themselves all over the place. The next two seasons were .901 and .902 respectively with a chunk of the .902 being split between Detroit (.910) and Philadelphia (.891). Carolina was a return to form and in 40 games he was at .914 during the 2018-19 season. He played 40 again in 2019-20, but fell to .905. This year was a super limited sample of 12 games at an impressive .923.

Ultimately, Mrazek is a league average goaltender with variance which makes him like so many other goaltenders in the league. His contract demands should be within reason and there will be a team who signs him and gives him a decent number of minutes in what will likely be a 1a/1b situation. There’s nothing wrong about that approach and there are many teams who could benefit from it.

As it pertains to the Penguins I don’t see direct fit because signing somebody like Mrazek would be to replace somebody like Casey DeSmith when the Penguins should be looking to replace Tristan Jarry first. The only path I see for Mrazek in Pittsburgh would be if the Penguins somehow blew up their entire goaltender situation and moved on from both Jarry and DeSmith. This would open the door to a 1a/1b scenario with players *like* Antti Raanta and Petr Mrazek coming in and taking over. It would be a lot of moving parts, but from a cap perspective it could be done if that is what the Penguins wanted to do. This just shows there are many pathways to a different approach at the goaltending position for the Penguins in 2021-22.

Thanks for reading!

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