May 26, 2021. Game 6 of the Penguins’ First Round series versus the Islanders. The Pens trail, 3 games to 2, due in no small part to Tristan Jarry’s dead-fish giveaway to Josh Bailey during the first minute of the second overtime in Game 5.
Jeff Carter staked the Pens to an early lead in the must-win game. In a harbinger of things to come, Anthony Beauvillier tied it for the Isles five minutes later. Unfazed, the Pens retake the lead on a power-play goal by Jake Guentzel. Again, the Isles draw even on a Kyle Palmieri tally, this one 73 seconds after we score.
The Pens grab the lead a third time on Jason Zucker’s early second-period marker. Our lead 3-2 lead holds up for seven minutes, but it’s precarious. Jarry’s clearly fighting himself and the puck.
Then the inevitable occurs. The Isles strike twice within 13 seconds to take a lead they never relinquish. As Jarry proceeds to dissolve, Brock Nelson pounds home the final exclamation-point goal less than three minutes later.
Mike Sullivan calls timeout to settle his young goalie, who’s visibly shaken. The Isles don’t score again, but they don’t need to. The damage is done.
Fast forward to March 2, 2024. The Pens are up 3-1 on the Flames at Scotiabank Saddledome with less than 10 minutes to play. They’re in complete command. Then Jarry allows a pair of rapid-fire goals 32 seconds apart to Nazem Kadri and Blake Coleman.
Tie game.
With overtime looming, Jarry yields the game-winner to Yegor Sharangovich with 50 seconds left in regulation. Snatching defeat from the jaws of certain victory.
Following losses in six of his next eight starts, Jarry lost his starting job to Alex Nedeljkovic. The Pens promptly went on an 8-3-2 tear to close out the season.
Our last two games, twin come-from-in-front defeats in which Jarry allowed three goals on only 17 shots are only the latest, and perhaps last, examples of a career pockmarked with uneven performances. Ones in which Jarry consistently allowed the goals you don’t want to give up, precisely when you didn’t want to allow them. Painting a picture of a mentally fragile goalie with a penchant for melting down at crunch time.
The stinging back-to-back losses to the Lightning and Kraken apparently were the last straw. Pens GM Kyle Dubas, who signed Jarry to a controversial five-year deal in the summer of 2023, placed the struggling goalie on waivers this afternoon.
If Jarry clears, entirely likely given his burgeoning $5.375 million cap hit and onerous contract term, he can and, in all likelihood, will be assigned to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, where he served a 14-game “conditioning” assignment following a disastrous start to the season.
It’s a long way to fall for a once promising second-round pick who won a Memorial Cup in junior and garnered two NHL all-star game selections, not to mention Vezina Trophy votes in two separate seasons. As recently as last season, Jarry still flashed that potential, tying for the league lead with six shutouts in what most observers considered a down season.
So what went wrong?
To my admittedly untrained eye, Jarry doesn’t appear to be moving as well as he once did. He doesn’t seem to be challenging shooters as often, and once he goes to his knees he’s virtually anchored to the ice.
The reasons why are anyone’s guess. For one, he appears to have lost his mojo. I know only too well on a personal level how debilitating a lack of confidence can be. For an NHL goalie, where a split-second delay in reaction can be the difference between a sparkling save and a red light flashing behind you, it must be a virtual death sentence.
Perhaps there’s an underlying physical condition. A couple of seasons ago, Jarry was rumored to have a chronic hip ailment, which might explain the perceived loss of athleticism and cat-like quickness that once were hallmarks.
The normal wear and tear of tending goal for parts of nine seasons in the NHL?
Playing behind the Pens’ less-than-stellar team defense?
All of the above? None of the above?
One thing is sure. Barring a miracle bounce-back, today’s move effectively ends the black-and-gold portion of his career.
Whatever his issues, I wish Tristan all the best in his future assignments.
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Hi Rick!
This is a sad story but the writing was on the wall. Personally, I have never thought that Jarry was a number one goalie. He looked promising back then but not to the point of becoming an elite goalie. He became the starting goalie almost by default. I have never been a fan of him, partly because of inconsistency. My blood pressure hit the roof quite a few times!
Hello Jorenz,
It is, indeed, a sad story. It's all too easy to forget athletes are human, subject to the same feelings and emotional swings as us common folk.
I can't imagine what Jarry's feeling now. Basically to be told you're unwanted and then uprooted, being torn away from teammates and friends and places you're comfortable with while being essentially exiled to a new team and a new situation.
Needless, to say, it would be a heck of a lot to deal with. To say nothing of the fact that the team has obviously rallied around Ned.
How could this not hurt...a lot.
And then you've got to go out and try to play through all of it like you're not affected even though deep down you are...
Rick
Hey all,
Just to apply the finishing touches, Jarry cleared waivers and has been assigned to the Baby Pens.
As anticipated, Joel Blomqvist has been called up to replace him.
Rick
Jack Johnson, Jim Rutherford, Brian Burke, Ron Hextall, Jeff Carter, and Tristan Jarry. If the losing continues, who do we blame next?
That's easy, Sullivan, Teflon Mike.
Hey Rick,
First, I won't argue that Jarry may not have aged well and that his slow reactions may be due in part to the hip issues that the team alluded to last season. That discussion may not be answerable without access to medical records and or testing, however, there are many other problems with Jarry's game outside of his slow reactions.
* Jarry never lines up on the puck; he always squares up to the shooters body not the stick leaving an entire 1/3 of the net open to the shooter. Two of the last 3 Goals Jarry ceded were a result of this inability to play his angles,
* Jarry his nervous feet and often over reacts. His over reactions often take him of the position. Perhaps your perceived loss athleticism may be hurting him here, but the real problem is that Jarry takes himself out of position to make the easy save.
* In a corollary to Jarry's nervous feet, Jarry chokes in big games and tends to have lower Sv% we the game is tide or up by one, only really having good Sv% when the game is a blowout in either direction.
* Furthermore, Jarry is weak emotionally; when he gives up 1 weak Goal, he gives up several more.
* When Jarry was first drafted, he was a second round pick with a strong pedigree, unfortunately, he turned out to be a head case. He should have been given the opportunities of which Matt Murray took advantage. He had to spend several more seasons in the Jrs and minors because of his weak mental/emotional game.
* Jarry doesn't track the puck well, he is often caught looking the wrong way when a puck slips in behind him.
* Jarry is selfish and like everything above sits outside of any injury issue. He has always tried to score Gs or get As, risking losses with his roaming from the net and attempting stretch passes that got picked off.
I played Goal. Jarry may have been a good athlete but as a Goalie he is clueless. As I said to you earlier, I have come to bury Jarry not to praise him.
Hey Other Rick,
Having never played goal, I'll trust your technical analysis. However, in Jarry's defense, the Pens are and have been a weak defensive team bordering on atrocious, especially over the past couple of seasons.
I would imagine if you're playing behind a group that doesn't always pay rapt attention to their defensive chores, it would be easy as a goalie to hedge your bets and start playing more conservatively and deeper in your net, which seems to meet the eye test concerning Jarry.
The chicken-or-the-egg syndrome.
I'm sure it works in the other direction as well...a team doesn't play as well or freely if they're not confident in their goalie.
It's interesting to note that Nedeljkovic and Jarry's numbers over the past couple of seasons are virtually identical. Again, pointing to the fact that there may be more involved in the overall dynamic than strictly a goaltender's individual play.
Having expressed that, something obviously needed to change. At this stage, I'd prefer to ride Ned and Blomqvist.
Rick
Rick,
You will have to excuse me if my eyes are bloodshot today, I was up late celebrating. Finally, Dubas has done something to give these flightless fowl a chance. It may be a little too little a little too late for this season (maybe not) but it is at least a step in the right direction.
Quick little ditty – When I was still working clinical, one of my field techs sent a test report back to me that read “The patient gave good effort, but it was raining outside.” Yes, this is a true story and the tech note was absolutely non sequitur. Patient effort and outside environmental conditions are mutually exclusive. Maybe, if the patient was being tested out of the building, the rain could have affected the test or if it were raining inside the clinic the weather may have influenced effort, but the rain outside the office had nothing to do with the patient’s exertion.
In the same vein, there are factors about a goalie that are outside of the team’s defense influence. Goals Against Average is 100% a team stat. Sv% is far less a measure of team defense, particularly when all of a Goalie’s Sv%s are low (HD, MD, LD).
• Of the Penguins’ 3 Goalies, Joel Blomqvist has the best overall Sv% (0.902) but has faced the highest Pct of High Danger Shots (HDS), almost 30% (29.9%). Meanwhile, Jarry and Ned face virtually the same Pct of HDS, yet Ned’s overall Sv% is significantly higher than Jarry’s (0.901 v 0.887)
• A Goalie’s spatial awareness, his ability to know where he is in relationship to his net and the angle from where the puck is to where that net is also independent to the team’s defense. (Maybe he should have read the old Jacques Plante book on how to play angles.)
• A player’s selfishness and desire to score an NHL Goal as a goalie is also out of the purview of team Defense. Jarry cost the Penguins a playoff game trying to shoot the puck into an empty net, throwing the puck right up his own slot to an opposing Fwd. Several times of the last several regular season, even after he got his coveted Goalie Goal, he has tried to score, icing the puck instead and drawing a defensive zone face-off, to put his own team’s defense in a bad spot.
• Team defense has nothing to do with blaming athletic trainers for poor performance.
While I can appreciate trying to give someone a benefit of the doubt, but when that person blames his teammates and stares them down after Goals are scored and then cries about the athletic trainers, I have no sympathy for them.
My next hope is that he gets buried in Wheeling and Murashov and Gauthier are elevated to WBS so they can progress and aren’t log jammed by a whining baby