STANLEY CUP FINALS : Penguin Goaltender Has Been on the Money

CHICAGO — The best “money goaltender” in hockey? Try Tom Barrasso.

That’s the opinion of no less an authority than Bryan Trottier. Remember, Trottier played with Billy Smith and those great New York Islander teams of the early 1980s.

“Smith used to call himself the best playoff money goaltender,” said Trottier, a member of four Stanley Cup winners with the Islanders. “Right now, Tommy is probably the best in the game. As each game gets bigger, he gets better.”

Certainly, Barrasso is the beneficiary of a fine team. His red-hot Pittsburgh Penguins went for a four-game sweep of the Chicago Blackhawks in the Stanley Cup finals Monday night.

But his performance in big games has emphasized Barrasso’s value to the defending Stanley Cup champions.

Barrasso is a combined 10-0 in playoff Games No. 5, 6 and 7 over the past two years. During that stretch, he has allowed an average of merely two goals a game.

Last season, he was in goal when the Penguins clinched the Cup with an 8-0 victory in Game 6 against the Minnesota North Stars.

On Saturday, he played one of the best games of his career as the Penguins beat Chicago 1-0 and took a 3-0 lead in the best-of-7 finals. With 37 playoff victories through Saturday, Barrasso was fifth among active goaltenders.

“Billy Smith had a lot of shaky playoff games, but that made him that much more hungry,” Trottier said. “But Tommy has been good from Game 1.

“I am one of Tom Barrasso’s biggest fans. He has given us great goaltending. On a championship team, you need everybody contributing and Tommy is certainly doing that.”

It is a far cry from Barrasso’s days with the Buffalo Sabres, when every season was an adventure that usually ended in disaster.

“As my career progressed and Buffalo went south, I was the one that received the brunt of attention and the brunt of the blame,” Barrasso said.

A high school star at Acton-Boxboro in Boston, Barrasso didn’t take long to make his mark in the NHL. In his first season out of high school, he captured the Vezina Trophy as the NHL’s best goaltender and the Calder Trophy as the league’s rookie of the year in 1984. That year, he also played for Team USA in the Canada Cup.

But still he was hardly in command of his game.

“I didn’t even know how to play goal in those days,” Barrasso said. “I was getting by on just raw talent.

“I don’t even recall my first few years in the league. I have a more vivid recollection of my last four years in Pittsburgh.”

Barrasso was traded to Pittsburgh in the middle of the 1988-89 season. One year later, his 2-year-old daughter, Ashley, was diagnosed with cancer.

Now 4, Ashley is reportedly cancer-free after two years of treatment. And Barrasso has an entirely new perspective on life.

“My philosophy changed with my daughter’s illness,” Barrasso said. “I saw what was important to me as a person. I would rather that my daughter had not gone through that, but it certainly made my wife (Megan) and me better people.

“It gave us a better understanding of what we were trying to accomplish with our lives.”

On the ice, Barrasso’s accomplishments have certainly been significant, although the moody goaltender hates to talk about them from a personal standpoint.

“Obviously, it’s not just one individual (who wins games), it’s a combination of all of us,” Barrasso said. “That’s why it’s a team game.

“We played well last year as a team and got contributions from everyone. That has allowed us to be successful.”