This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Casey DeSmith
Dallas Stars Goaltender
Undrafted, a career .9093 across 163 games, and an .8946 in the season before he was signed.
| Season | Team | GP | W | L | OTL | GA | GAA | SO | SA | SV% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | PIT | 14 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 28 | 2.40 | 1 | 356 | .921 |
| 2018-19 | PIT | 36 | 15 | 11 | 5 | 89 | 2.75 | 3 | 1060 | .916 |
| 2020-21 | PIT | 20 | 11 | 7 | 0 | 48 | 2.54 | 2 | 543 | .912 |
| 2021-22 | PIT | 26 | 11 | 6 | 5 | 66 | 2.79 | 3 | 769 | .914 |
| 2022-23 | PIT | 38 | 15 | 16 | 4 | 109 | 3.17 | 0 | 1142 | .905 |
| 2023-24 | VAN | 29 | 12 | 9 | 6 | 80 | 2.89 | 1 | 759 | .895 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 163 | 70 | 53 | 21 | 420 | 2.82 | 10 | 4629 | .909 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
Twenty-nine games in Vancouver, 12-9-6, an .8946 save percentage, a 2.89 average and 1 shutout on 759 shots.
Vancouver’s goaltending was 8th in the league last season, so the .8946 is his rather than the club’s. It is also eighty-seven points below his own career rate: a career .9093 across 163 games with 70 wins and 10 shutouts is a genuinely useful backup, and one season of 29 games is not enough to overturn it.
The Physical Game
He is 6-0 and 188 and plays deep and square rather than aggressively. He is small for a modern goaltender and the game is built on being in the right place early rather than on covering ground.
The rebound control is the weakness, and on a club with Dallas’s structure it will matter less than it did in Vancouver. Against a clean shot from the perimeter he is reliable; against a scramble in his own crease he is not.
The Mental Game
Six seasons as somebody else’s backup, in Pittsburgh, Montreal and Vancouver, and he has never been given a starter’s workload. Seventy wins in 163 games is a good record for a man who never knows when he is playing.
The .8946 came in a season where he appeared twenty-nine times behind a Vezina finalist. The role suits him and the numbers say so.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, out of Rochester, New Hampshire, four years at New Hampshire and a first game at 26. That is a hard road and 163 games is a real career at the end of it.
Dallas needs twenty-eight starts from him and needs them at .909 rather than .895. Everything else on this club is in place.