Casey DeSmith said that he caught some flack from Teddy Blueger over his goalie mask last season.
"Teddy was chirping me because my mask was too 'generic' and it was 'like something you'd get at Dick's Sporting Goods,'" DeSmith explained, providing air quotes around Blueger's descriptions.
The mask was pretty plain, as far as goalie masks go. It was black with a gold stripe down the middle, and the Penguins logo on the sides:
PENGUINS
Casey DeSmith in practice last season.
"There was really no design," Blueger said Wednesday of DeSmith's former mask. "It's like one of those generic ones you just see when you create a goalie in the NHL video game."
When coming up with a design for his mask this season, DeSmith came up with a plan that would surely avoid any chirps from Blueger: Have Blueger just design it himself.
"I challenged him to design a better one," DeSmith said. "I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I thought he did a great job. It's very Teddy."
The mask design encompasses some of DeSmith's favorite hobbies. The side features cartoon penguins from the Penguins of Madagascar movie playing disc golf, and the back had a picture of Dwight Schrute from The Office, DeSmith's favorite show:
Penguins_Equipment/Instagram
Blueger knew that he wanted to include something from The Office, but he had never seen the show before. So he did his homework in the offseason, and is currently on season six of the nine-season series.
"Dwight's on there," Blueger said. "Casey's always talking about The Office, and I'd never really watched it before. He just keeps making references and all this stuff. So I finally gave it a chance, and Dwight kind of became my favorite character. That part where he's giving that speech was one of my favorite scenes."
The scene Blueger chose to be depicted on the back of DeSmith's mask is from episode 17 of season 2, titled "Dwight's Speech." In the episode, Dwight wins the award for salesperson of the year, and draws inspiration from dictators for his acceptance speech:
"It's a pretty well-known speech, if you're an Office fan," DeSmith said.
Blueger said that there wasn't much back-and-forth in the process, and that he just created his design, sent it to DeSmith, and DeSmith passed it along to the painter. Blueger said that he added some elements "half-jokingly," like spelling out the word "one" on the chin instead of putting an actual "1" on it, and adding his own signature to the back. Blueger said he was interested to see how much of his design would make it onto the final helmet, and was surprised when DeSmith kept all of those elements.
"I wasn't sure if he was actually going to do it," Blueger said. "But I think it actually turned out pretty good, for the most part. The back of it is hilarious."
Blueger didn't rule out designing masks for other goaltenders in the future.
"If people really like it, maybe I'd do it again," he said with a smile.
