Steve Penney, the Stanley Cup goalie who came from nowhere
Steve Penney remembers the morning skate in Boston, almost like it was yesterday.
He was a call-up with the Montreal Canadiens. He had started four games in goal late in a troubled season for the Habs — and he hadn’t won one of them.
He was there, he figured, to take a few extra shots in practice, to do what third goalies are supposed to do. He understood what it was to be the third-stringer.
He was that in Halifax, playing for coach John Brophy. He didn’t exactly expect to get called up late in the 1984 National Hockey League season.
And he certainly didn’t expect what came after that.
“We’re skating around like usual and I’m getting warmed up and the coach (Jacques Lemaire) came beside me and said: ‘Do you feel like playing tonight?’
“I almost froze. I looked at him and said: ‘Yes, yes sir.’ I was so surprised I didn’t have time to get nervous.
“During the skate, I kind of practised the way I always did, as the third goalie (behind Rick Wamsley and Richard Sevigny). I took some extra shots. Did that kind of thing. Jacques came back to me and said ‘Relax, you’re playing tonight. You don’t have to do this.’ He said it. I still wasn’t sure I believed it.”
Steve Penney is talking about 1984 on the phone, not the famous book of that name but the year he came from nowhere
to Stanley Cup prominence. That happens every once in a while. A relative unknown, maybe an Erik Kallgren, can show up and suddenly make a difference. Almost out of the blue, just like that.
Penney was an eighthround draft pick. Not really a prospect of any kind. “Nobody
expected me to play in the NHL,” said Penney. “I couldn’t believe it was happening.
He played the opening playoff night against the powerful Boston Bruins, who finished 29 points ahead of Montreal in the standings. And then he kept on playing, as Montreal eliminated the Bruins, then the Quebec Nordiques before succumbing in Round 3 to the fourtime Stanley Cup champion, New York Islanders. That was the last of 19 straight playoff rounds won by the dynastic Islanders.
Penney started 15 straight games for the Canadiens that near-miraculous playoff season, and he’s still not completely sure how it all came to be.
“I was more anxious than I was nervous,” said Penney. “But the team really made me feel good, especially the veteran guys like Larry Robinson and Bob Gainey. They told me, ‘Just have fun, we’ll take care of the rest.’ I know it’s a cliché, but after a couple of saves, I felt pretty comfortable.”
The next season, his first and only one as an NHL starter, he played 12 playoff games for the Habs. That was 27 games in two years. That’s more than Frederik Andersen started in playoffs during his five seasons with the Maple Leafs. Penney won 15 Stanley Cup games. Andersen won 10 for Toronto before leaving for Carolina.
“It’s just a game,” said Penney, understanding how seriously goaltending is viewed in the hockey world. “It’s easy to forget that sometimes.”