Tristan Jarry is comfortable working with a mask. It protects him from the daily dangers of facing the planet’s finest shooters of frozen hockey pucks. And the mask he’ll wear this season for the Pittsburgh Penguins has hidden meaning. His favorite childhood cartoon character, Jerry Mouse, is fishing with Tom Cat — just as Jarry spent so many days with his grandfather along lakes throughout British Columbia.
At first glance, choosing Tom and Jerry seems playful. But after an interview unlike any he’s given since debuting for the Penguins almost nine years ago, it’s difficult not to find symbolism in those iconic rivals revealing the secret that is their affection for one another.
Jarry is ready for his own reveal.
“To be open and talk about anything, it gives people a different light,” Jarry said from his dressing room stall at UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex.
“They may not be as … I don’t want to say as hard on you; you always want people to be hard on you. You want the best from everyone. This is the National Hockey League, you want the best from everyone every single night.
“But maybe people aren’t seeing the way I truly see things, and the way those things were being portrayed out there is different from what I really see.”
So much of the focus with Jarry is on his performance as a goalie to whom the Penguins made a long-term commitment a year ago. He was an unrestricted free agent, the best goalie on the open market, and entering his prime. They missed the playoffs for the first time in 17 years and were run by a new hockey boss in his first month on the job. The five-year contract came together quickly, with Jarry probably leaving some money on the table and Kyle Dubas likely having some doubt.
The plan was for Jarry to firmly establish himself as a franchise goalie in the first season of that contract. He didn’t. He didn’t even finish it as the starter, ceding the crease to journeyman Alex Nedeljkovic as the Penguins put together arguably their most consistent stretch and almost qualified for the playoffs.
Presumptive questions were raised, though not directly to Jarry. While not bad, his relationship with reporters who regularly cover the Penguins is also not great — mostly because his answers tend to focus on the team rather than his own performance, and also because he usually doesn’t give the media colorful quotes.
Fair or not, how a player is portrayed in stories shapes the public perception of that player. Though teammates say they aren’t quite sure how Jarry is viewed outside their group, they guessed that he’s not seen for what he is to them.
“He’s a humble guy, always has a smile on his face, talkative, always very calm,” defenseman Marcus Pettersson said. “And a little sarcastic in a fun way. He’s ultra-competitive on the ice, but in tense situations, he’ll say something to loosen things up.”
A good example of this was last season when Jarry said something to Pettersson after a tough goal allowed in a game against the Stars in Dallas. From afar, the scene appeared to show Jarry staring down his defenseman in a moment of frustration. That’s how it ended up being portrayed on talk radio and social media in the days that followed, and it wasn’t long before the media members who cover the Penguins whispered among themselves that there might be a problem between Jarry and his teammates.
“There’s not,” defenseman Kris Letang said. “And I don’t think that’s what actually happened with Petey and Jars.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t,” Pettersson said. “Not at all.”
What really went down, they say, was the culmination of a frustrating month in which popular teammate Jake Guentzel had been traded and losses piled up. The eventual defeat to the Stars was the Penguins’ ninth regulation loss in 13 games, and their playoff chances felt deep-fried.
Jarry didn’t stare down Pettersson, the Penguins insist. He didn’t yell, either.
“I don’t think I’ve yelled at anybody ever in my life,” Jarry said.
Sidney Crosby can’t recall it, either.
“I’m sure you don’t get a lot of people’s real version in a 20-second soundbite,” the Penguins captain said. “I don’t know what the perception is. Yelling? No, never.”
After that goal against in Dallas, Jarry said he tried to calm a tense moment with some encouraging words in the form of humor — a trick he picked up from Evgeni Malkin.
“It’s, like, people hear interview or see one play and think, ‘This is good guy or bad guy,’” Malkin said. “But it’s not like that. And Jars is great guy. He’s great teammate. You see how he support Ned last year, right? No fights. Not jealous. Best for team. But nobody write that.”
Ah, yes — the other perception from last season that stuck to Jarry. Few people outside the Penguins believe he was happy for Nedeljkovic and the team’s success when he wasn’t playing.
“He was like Ned’s biggest fan,” Pettersson said. “And I’m not surprised. That’s how Jars is. He’s as team-first as any guy in here.”
Jarry knew he was in a no-win situation over the final weeks of last season. If he showed any sign of slight agitation about coach Mike Sullivan riding the hot hand in Nedeljkovic, the narrative would have been that Jarry was selfish. Yet by quietly supporting Nedeljkovic at every turn and not publicly decrying Sullivan’s goalie decision, Jarry attracted questions about whether he cared enough.
“You do have frustrations; you want to play, you’re competitive — everybody wants to have their chance,” Jarry said. “But I think, also, there’s a side of it where you have to wait your turn, you have to earn your opportunity. And I think, within earning that opportunity, you have to be a good teammate. You have to support others.
“And I think that’s something from being in this organization very long, learning from (Marc-André Fleury) … they’ll need you at some point. So it’s not helpful to get down on yourself or to be a hard person to be around. I think it’s the exact opposite.”
That’s an approach instilled in him by his grandfather. Jarry’s attitude toward being on a team is similar to how he lives life — hands-on, low-key, enjoying things that can be taken for granted.
The most interesting part about Jarry the person is that he doesn’t seem interested in calling attention to details that might endear the public to him. For example, he spent a week this summer helping a neighbor build a treehouse. If he can get his hands on something broken, he’ll try to fix it. He regularly gets in the car with his wife to drive around the rural parts of Western Pennsylvania counties, stopping off in valley towns to check out decades-old restaurants and chat up locals. He feels like a tourist because he goes to Mount Washington to check out how Pittsburgh’s skyline looks when lit at night.
“We love it here,” Jarry said. “That’s one of the reasons I stayed. We love this place. I love this team. And if I talk about the team a lot when people ask me questions after games, it’s because I’ve always thought the logo matters more than the name on the back, and that’s just the way I am.
“Maybe those aren’t the answers everybody wants. But that’s what I’m about — the team. That’s who I am.”
Who he’s been hasn’t been good enough on the ice, and Jarry knows it.
He’s taken to heart Sullivan’s private critiques about preparation. Sullivan has never thought Jarry doesn’t prepare. He just grew to wonder if Jarry’s preparation needed to be tweaked to unlock more consistency. Jarry agreed, and he began working on that midway through last season, continuing it through summer training.
“I have a good relationship with Jars,” Sullivan said. “I do think he keeps to himself. I think he’s a private person, and that needs to be understood. But I do think he embraces the team, maybe more than people realize. He just quietly goes about his business.”
Jarry is more fun-loving than he lets on. He’s quick with a joke on team flights. It’s a running gag that he never orders the same meal twice at team dinners. If he gets the best of Crosby or Malkin in practice, he chirps in a way that would make Fleury, a notorious prankster, proud.
Jarry is aware what people see probably isn’t what they’re really getting. He is trying to navigate how to change that without changing himself just to please people.
“You put a different face on when you wear the jersey,” he said. “I think a lot of people in the league do that. I think it’s just something that you don’t want to be perceived the wrong way. You don’t want people to be judgmental of yourself.”
Ultimately, Jarry will be judged for the saves he makes when wearing his mask. He did not come to camp knowing if he was the No. 1 goalie, but circumstances — Nedeljkovic’s lower-body injury that landed him on injured reserve — have thrust him into that role.
He hasn’t started a game of consequence for the Penguins in almost six months. He will do so in Wednesday’s season opener at home, and he knows exactly what he wants people to think.
“You want to be perceived as that hard-nosed player that works as hard as he can to do everything he can to help the team win,” Jarry said, conceding he probably could have done himself some public relations favors had he said so earlier.
“I hope that’s something that people are able to see me as — because I want people to see me a different way too.”
(Top photo: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
