The title of this post was going to be, With Goaltending Like This, Who Needs Enemies. Indeed, Tristan Jarry was up to his old tricks, giving away a lead his teammates had worked so hard to earn.
Then the unexpected happened. In a complete reversal of form, Jarry stiffened and even made some big saves, allowing the Penguins to claw back and snatch a 6-3 victory from the jaws of defeat.
As for the rest of the team? I thought for the most part we gave a full 60-minute effort, even if the results weren’t always there.
The black-and-gold jumped on the homestanding Canadiens early, ringing up an 8-0 advantage on the shot clock and a 2-0 lead thanks to goals by ex-Hab Lars Eller and resurgent Rickard Rakell. We appeared to be in complete command.
Then Jarry did his worst, yielding a late first-period goal to Kaiden Guhle and a power-play tally to monster truck Juraj Slafkovsky early in the second. A classic case of Jarry allowing goals you didn’t want to allow.
When Emil Heineman beat him clean off the rush later in the frame to give the Habs a 3-2 lead…
…does anyone remember the part in A Christmas Story where Ralphie’s dad was fixing the furnace? My expletive-laced reaction was something like that.
After Eller mercifully struck for his second goal before the end of the period to knot the score at 3-all, I texted the following question to PP colleague Caleb DiNatale.
Should Mike Sullivan go with BQ (Joel Blomqvist) in the third?
His response…an unequivocal yes.
Actually, a goaltending switch of sorts did occur. Porous Jarry suddenly disappeared. Replaced by the two-time All-Star version.
With Tristan’s better-self holding down the fort, his teammates struck for three third-period goals, one each by Kevin Hayes (7:47), Kris Letang (11:33) and Evgeni Malkin (18:50) to salt the game away.
On the night, “Geno Machino” collected a goal (his 499th) and two assists to pace the attack and earn top-star billing. The big guy leads the team with seven points (1+6) through four games.
Speaking of big guys, Jesse Puljujärvi returned following a one-game absence and collected an assist. Rookie Rutger McGroarty sat out.
On ‘d,’ Matt Grzelcyk collected a pair of assists, including a dandy on Letang’s goal. Sully fave Ryan Shea replaced Jack St. Ivany on the third pairing. Playing his off (right) side, he was a minus-1 in 15:48 of ice time.
Like the way our bottom-six is looking so far. Actually, make that our bottom nine.
Credit Jarry, too, for bouncing back and giving his team a chance to win.
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Rick
Nice road victory for sure but I can't give all the credit to Jarry - he did make a few decent saves
but as a team I thought we kept a lot of pressure off of him but continuing to attack on the
offensive end of the ice.
Also, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Sullivan plans to work McGroarty back into the lineup
in the near future. Same with St.Ivany - I'm not a fan of Shea and believe he should be getting
his minutes in WBS.
I look forward to your feedback.
Hey Mike,
Great to hear from you as always. As you can see, I'm easing my way into semi-retirement by writing semi-summaries...lol.
Good thoughts on Jarry. Maybe part of the problem is he's rusty. (That's what you call grasping at straws.) Perhaps his play will even out with playing time.
We can only hope.
Regarding McGroarty, with our surplus of forwards and the fact that he can be sent to the Baby Pens without passing through waivers, I see a ticket to Northeastern PA in his near future. Not sure how I feel about that, but at least he'd be guaranteed to get plenty of ice time in all sorts of situations.
Might be the best thing for his development at this stage.
Regarding St. Ivany (who I like as well)? IMHO, the fact that Shea's a Sully favorite doesn't bode especially well for the kid.
Hope I'm wrong.
Rick
Hey Mike,
Hope you don't mind me jumping in here.
I want Jarry out of Pgh and therefore am not ready to erect a statue to him. However, I can't completely fault him on any of the 3 Gs he gave up yesterday, the defense shared in some to all of the 3 GA. The first GA was the only one of the 3 that was mainly Jarry's fault, he didn't track the puck movement well and was out of position when the shot came. Maybe if the a Defenseman had done his job and kept Slafkovsky from taking Jarry's eyes away, he could have tracked the puck better - that Goal was about a 60 - 40 GA with at most 60% of the blame on Jarry. Slafkovsky's PPG was completely on the D with a back door tap-in on the PP while the 3rd GA came on just one more odd man rush. I couldn't get a good angle on the shot to know if Jarry had played the angle properly but bottom line was the poor transition game.
As for McGroarty, everything is playing out as I feared, Beauvillier (and now Rust) are killing Crosby, grinding him down from carrying their dead weight. In the mean time Sullivan has delegate the one of his 2 youngest Fwds Puljujärvi and McGroarty to press box duty with the return of Rust. When Lizotte gets back, they bosth will be thrown in the press box or in WBS.
Re: Shea/St. Ivany It really is hard to tease out players skill from system flaws. Having said that, I don't like any of the LHD on the big league roster so I agree, St. Ivany a natural RHD should be in their not a LHD who has trouble playing his natural side let alone being asked to cover his off-side.
Hey Other Rick,
Not having your goaltender's eye (and experience) I'll trust your judgment on the 'd' (or lack of) contributing to the goals. I confess my reaction had more than a bit of knee-jerk to it. It's just that the same pattern keeps repeating when Jarry's between the pipes. However it happens, the puck gets past him at the most inopportune times.
Perhaps it's at least partly a function of him not seeing a ton of game action over the past six months or so. Maybe he's a bit rusty. However, this negative pattern seems to have reared its ugly head long before that.
Hopefully, he rights himself as he did in the third period last night and finds a little confidence and mojo. If not, we're going to have a $5.4 million dilemma on our hands.
Rick
Don't get me wrong Rick, I am not endorsing Jarry, I am just acknowledging that the defense made things tougher for him than it should have been. If Blomqvist had played, perhaps the score would have been 6 - 1 or 6 - 2 but the defense was so poor that at least that back door tap-in would have went in.
Watching Jarry play over his 9 year career (yep he acts like he is still a rookie but is in his 9th season), he isn't rusty, this is just who he is. He is a good athlete but not a very good goalie. His athleticism allows him to look fairly good when he guesses right but that is all he does is guess.
He has no idea of how to play the position. I would say that I hope that he starts a good run of guesses to drive his stock up, so Dubas could sell him off, but the reality is, the gambler disease will infect Dubas and Sullivan and they will say wow let it ride so we can break the bank which will lead the team to bankruptcy for the 3rd consecutive season.
Hey Other Rick,
A while back I read in an article (can't recall who wrote it) that Jarry has difficulty identifying the primary threat when facing multiple threats on a play. And, goodness knows, playing behind the our watery defense he's facing multiple threats a whole lot.
Rick