As they close in on a couple of major individual milestones, the Pittsburgh Penguins’ heart and soul for the past two decades, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, are again presiding over a team with an early-season goaltending issue.
Indeed, what is transpiring in Pittsburgh is not novel.
First, though, let’s try to simplify the current goalie issue.
• Tristan Jarry, re-signed to a big extension in July 2023, did not start the final 13 games last season. He has started only two of four games this season and carried over the sub-.900 save percentage (.866 this season) that plagued him since the calendar flipped to 2024.
• Joel Blomqvist, a prospect whom management did not feel was ready for NHL ascension, hence the re-signing of Alex Nedeljkovic this past offseason, was a surprise starter against the Maple Leafs in Toronto after a strong performance against the Red Wings in Detroit. He has a .906 save percentage.
• Nedeljkovic, who started in Jarry’s stead the final 13 games last season and was in line to take the net for the season opener against the New York Rangers, appears to be nearing a return from a lower-body injury sustained during training camp.
The Penguins’ net is filled by a couple of veterans, neither of whom has proven consistent for different reasons. If Blomqvist is the best of the three, the Penguins can’t go with him without moving Nedeljkovic or Jarry, whom they’ve tried and failed to trade.
Nedeljkovic’s return will push Blomqvist to the AHL, where he and Sergei Murashov will begin a battle for the long-term future of Penguins goaltending. If everything goes according to plan, one of them will emerge as the franchise goalie that Jarry has yet to become, despite his five-year contract with an average annual value of $5,375,000.
But Crosby and Malkin probably can’t care less about which of the Penguins’ talented young goalies emerges as a potential No. 1 over the next couple of seasons. Crosby and Malkin are in their late 30s. They lead one of the NHL’s oldest rosters and desperately crave a return to meaningful hockey in the spring after a postseason absence of two years.
They need a goalie for the here and now.
They didn’t need these big questions this early in the season, but they’ve experienced this situation, or at least something resembling it.
The goalies with whom they won the Stanley Cup — Marc-André Fleury and Matt Murray — each dealt with something similar to Jarry’s current plight. Fleury in 2010-11 and Murray in 2018-19 were temporarily supplanted as the go-to goalie early in those seasons — in each case only the second season after being in the crease for a Cup win.
In each instance, the optics were jarring: Fleury and Murray, dressed to work donning a ball cap instead of a goalie mask, as Brent Johnson and Casey DeSmith, respectively, started a stretch of games for the scuffling Penguins.
The Penguins coaches at the time, Dan Bylsma and Mike Sullivan, never said publicly they had lost faith in their Cup-winning goaltenders. Neither had to.
Their incumbents offered no those coaches no choice.
|
Player
|
Season
|
Games
|
Record
|
SV%
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Marc-André Fleury |
2010-11
|
8
|
1-6-0
|
.853
|
 Matt Murray |
2018-19
|
11
|
4-5-1
|
.877
|
Fleury and Murray each came off a bad series, at least by the Penguins’ Cup-winning standards, the previous postseason. The Penguins were bounced in the second round both years, largely because their goalie was not at his best. Instead of making a statement by starting strong the ensuing season, Fleury and Murray struggled out of the gate in 2010-11 and 2018-19.
A Cup favorite in each season, the Penguins were at risk early in both years. While the Cup cannot be won in the first two months of any season, as is commonly said, contenders usually don’t find themselves scrapping to merely qualify by Thanksgiving.
That is especially true of contenders with young goalies who had starred on the biggest stage.
Fleury was 25 and Murray 24 when their coaches turned to backups for brief runs. Fleury ceded the cage to Johnson, a veteran. Murray surrendered it to DeSmith, who had outperformed a higher-regard prospect in the AHL to win the No. 2 NHL job.
That prospect? Jarry.
And now Jarry finds himself in a similar — though not exactly the same — spot.
He is 29, the prime age for a goalie. He lacks the postseason success of either Fleury or Murray at the time of their temporary benching. He entered the season not firmly established as the No. 1, even though he — same as Fleury and Murray before him — has a long-term contractual commitment from the Penguins.
Despite their struggles at the times, Fleury and Murray had firm backing from management and coaches during their trying times. Jarry was no lock to return this season after his second-half freefall, and probably wouldn’t have if another team was willing to take on his contract. The first home start of the preseason, traditionally given to the No. 1 goalie under Sullivan, was bestowed upon Nedeljkovic — an indication that, if nothing else, Jarry was not being handed the starting job he lost last season.
When he opted to start Blomqvist on Saturday in Toronto, Sullivan signaled he’ll go with the goalie who is playing best, regardless of contractual status. If that’s the case, neither Jarry nor Nedeljkovic should get too comfortable when Nedeljkovic returns.
Conversely, when Bylsma went to Johnson over Fleury and Sullivan chose DeSmith over Murray, it was always with the understanding the underperforming star goalie would eventually take back the crease. Shelving the two goalies was, in part, to stabilize the Penguins at the time but also to allow Fleury and Murray to each hit a reset button on shaky seasons.
They did punch that button, by the way.
Fleury was the Penguins’ best player in the second half of 2010-11, practically willing them to a fourth-place Eastern Conference finish in the wake of season-ending injuries to Crosby and Malkin. He went 19-11-3 in the second half, recording a .918 save percentage.
Murray, injured after he regained his slot from DeSmith, returned with 25-9-5 with a .930 save percentage to close his season. He, too, was the best player down the stretch as the Penguins found their way into the playoffs.
Neither of those postseasons lasted long for the Penguins, but not because of goaltending. If nothing else, Fleury and Murray each reaffirmed their franchise goalie status to end a season that unexpectedly featured an early goaltending issue.
An early-season goaltending issue wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for the Penguins when it happened earlier in the Crosby/Malkin era. That doesn’t mean this one will end well. But the Penguins would be fortunate if Jarry, who was solid in the third period of a win Monday against the Canadiens in Montreal, repeated Penguins history.
(Top photo of Tristan Jarry: Justin Berl / Getty Images)
