PITTSBURGH - NHL Free Agency opened up on July 1, and for the first time in his professional career, goaltender Tristan Jarry became an unrestricted free agent and was free to negotiate and sign a contract with any of the 32 teams. The Penguins started the day with Casey DeSmith as the only goaltender on an NHL contract. Following a three-hour stretch where Kyle Dubas spent millions of dollars addressing the other areas of weakness of the team, he made his biggest bet on the Canadian net-minder who’s been in the organization for a decade now.

Tristan Jarry officially signed a five-year, $26.875 million ($5.375 million AAV) contract with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

At his best, Tristan Jarry is an all-star-caliber goalie. He’s proven that twice by being selected to the NHL All-Star game in the 2019-20 and 2021-22 seasons, along with receiving Vezina Trophy votes in two separate seasons. Jarry has the skillset to be a top-10 goalie in the NHL season in, and season out. The biggest question is reliability when it comes to Tristan Jarry. That aspect can be broken down into two subcategories: health and clutch ability. For those two reasons, I think Kyle Dubas made the wrong decision by giving Jarry a five-year contract.

In terms of health, Jarry has been one of the unluckiest goalies in the league. Prior to the 2020-21 season, the Penguins traded starting goaltender Matt Murray to the Ottawa Senators. General manager at the time, Jim Rutherford, felt comfortable making this move, as in the season prior, Jarry would play in tandem with Murray and vastly outperform the two-time Stanley Cup-winning goalie. In that previous 2019-20 season, Jarry posted a .921 save percentage in 33 regular season games, while Murray salvaged just a .899 in 38 regular season contests.

Beginning in the 2020-21 season, Tristan Jarry was unquestionably the starter of the future. The team had divested themselves of every other goalie in the organization who could be a full-time NHL starter. We now have a three-year sample of what Tristan Jarry looks like as a starting goaltender. In those three seasons, Jarry has played just 144 games, averaging 48 games in an 82-game regular season.

According to CapFriendly, there are 11 goalies projected to make between $5 million and $6 million next season. One of those goalies is Juuse Saros, who played 64 games last season for the Nashville Predators. Another goalie in that bracket is Darcy Kuemper, who played 57 games for the Penguins' rival the Washington Capitals. Igor Shesterkin, who is grossly underpaid but still within that threshold, played 58 games for the New York Rangers.

Granted, it is no longer the 1990s, and starters are no longer expected to start 70-plus games, but Tristan Jarry will be the twelfth-highest-paid goaltender in the NHL next season. It’s no longer excusable for him to barely play half of the games. Down the stretch of the season, as the Penguins were making a push towards the playoffs, Jarry returned after injuring himself during the Winter Classic at Fenway Park. The problem is, he himself said at the end of the season that he played injured for most of the second half of the season.

On top of being unhealthy during the regular season, Jarry’s injury at the end of the 2021-22 season cost the Penguins their chances at moving further into the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The team started Casey DeSmith during game one of their first-round series against the New York Rangers. While already being underdogs with either Jarry or DeSmith in net, Louis Domingue was forced to start five games in the series, as well as closing out game one following DeSmith’s injury. Jarry was able to suit up for game seven, but was obviously playing injured and lost the game for the team in overtime.

I don’t have the answer as to why he’s so injury prone, or what can be done to prevent further injuries. From the sounds of it, Dubas fired most of the athletic training staff upon his arrival and brought in a new group to take care of injuries. There were reports of a hip/groin injury during the second half of the season, as well as a core/abdominal issue for Jarry. Hopefully, the new staff can help keep him healthy. When healthy, Jarry has proven he can play up to the level that rationalizes his new contract.

On top of injuries, Jarry has shown to be shaky in high-pressure situations. I won’t count game seven in the 2021-22 playoffs vs. Rangers against him for this portion, as I mentioned previously that he was playing injured.

Jarry has started all of the games in an NHL playoff series just once in his career. In the 2020-21 COVID-shortened season, the Penguins finished in first place in the makeshift NHL East division. They would take on the New York Islanders in the first round of the playoffs, who finished fourth in that division. The Penguins entered the series as clear favorites, although just two seasons prior, this same Islanders team swept the Penguins out of the playoffs in the first round. 

The Islanders were 20th in the league in goals scored during the regular season that year. That didn’t stop them from lighting up Tristan Jarry in six games. Jarry posted a .888 save percentage, including many visible miscues. The most notorious misplay by Jarry came in double overtime of game five. The series was tied at two at that point, and the next goal would heavily sway the favor in the series for whichever team could score it. 

Jarry would retrieve a dump-in from the Islanders, hold onto the puck, and in an effort to pass to one of the incoming Penguins skaters, passes it directly to Islanders F Josh Bailey, who swiftly dekes around an out-of-position Jarry and scores. This gave the Islanders all of the momentum in the world to close the series out at home in game six. They proceeded to put up a five-spot on Jarry and send the Penguins home early.  

Jarry looked completely shaken in that series against the Islanders, and that is the majority of the playoff sample size we have of him at the NHL level. Although the Penguins didn’t make the playoffs this past season, there still were games at the end of the year that had the importance of playoff games, as the Penguins were fighting to stay alive in the chase.

Let me set the scene. The Penguins are gearing up to play their 81st game of the season. It’s their final home game of the year, and also fan appreciation night. The Penguins currently hold a wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference. Because of the surrounding teams’ amounts of games left to play, the Penguins would need to win their final two games to clinch a spot in the playoffs, for a record 17th consecutive season for the team. The two teams left for Pittsburgh to play, the Chicago Blackhawks and the Columbus Blue Jackets, are two of the three worst teams in the NHL this season, and actively tanking for a shot at Connor Bedard in the NHL Draft Lottery. Tonight, the Blackhawks are the opponent.

The Blackhawks finished the season in last place in terms of goals scored. With ten minutes left in the third period, the Penguins were tied with Chicago at one. The next ten minutes would end the Penguins' season. In a span of 26 seconds, Chicago netted two goals on Jarry, taking a 3-1 lead. Two empty netters and one lone Danton Heinen goal later, the life was sucked out of PPG Paints Arena, and Pittsburgh as a whole.

In Jarry’s defense, most NHL teams won’t win when they score just two goals. However, Jarry gave the team no chance when he quickly allowed two bad goals to the Blackhawks, and never helped his team regain any momentum. The next night, the Islanders would clinch their playoff spot, eliminating the Penguins for the first time in nearly two decades.

The team’s lack of success this past season doesn’t solely rest at the feet of Tristan Jarry. The Penguins got basically zero scoring help outside of their top-six forwards and had some miserable performances from their defense early in the season. However, the most important position in hockey is the goalie. A good goalie can take a mediocre team to a Stanley Cup, and a bad goalie can tank a season for an elite team. Tristan Jarry doesn’t need to be elite on this new contract, he simply needs to play games healthy, and the rest will come in turn.

While I disagree with the decision to re-sign Jarry, especially at the term Dubas signed him to, he is now the goalie of the future for the Pittsburgh Penguins. After making many moves to upgrade the rest of the team, a large portion of the team’s future success now rests on the shoulders of Tristan Jarry, and maybe more accurately, his ability to remain healthy.