The Pittsburgh Penguins are back in action on Tuesday night, getting a fresh start on a new week after one of the most insane and baffling weeks in franchise history. It is also a fascinating game against
the Edmonton Oilers.
Sidney Crosby is closing in on Mario Lemieux’s franchise record for career points.
Oilers superstar Leon Draisaitl is one point away from 1,000 for his career.
Connor McDavid is in town. That is always incredible to watch, because recently he has just dunked all over the Penguins when he plays against them.
The Penguins might do something bizarre that you have never seen before. How big of a lead can they actually surrender? Tune in and find out.
There is also former Penguins goalie Tristan Jarry returning to face his former team, with Stuart Skinner getting a chance to face his former team. We have the rare dual revenge game just a few days after the trade.
It is tremendous theatre.
The Skinner vs. Jarry matchup is interesting not just in the context of Tuesday’s game, but also for the remainder of the season. Edmonton is hoping that one of the most inconsistent goalies in the league can fix its long-standing problem in goal and help get the team over the hump to win a Stanley Cup.
The Penguins are going to try and maintain their surprising start and roll — for now — with a Skinner and Arturs Silovs duo and hope they can play well enough to get them into the playoffs. Or at least hold down the fort until Sergei Murashov is ready and gets his chance.
It is going to be fascinating to see which of these two goalies (Skinner or Jarry) will play better the rest of the way.
What makes it so fascinating is they are so similar in terms of their overall production and consistent inconsistency throughout their careers. Both have shown flashes of brilliance with high peaks. Both have had stunning struggles and low valleys. Skinner actually backstopped a team to a pair of Stanley Cup Finals. Jarry has fumbled in just about every big moment he has played in and tends to wear down as each season goes on.
The simplest way to put it: They are goalies. Run-of-the-mill goalies that are capable of highs and lows at any given moment when you least expect either of them to happen. I don’t know how anybody, from the teams themselves, to media, to fans, to even the players have any idea as to what to expect over the next four months of the regular season from either player. If you think you know, I think you are kidding yourself.
There are maybe — maybe — four or five goalies in the NHL that I confidently trust over an extended period of time to play and produce at a consistently elite level. I trust Connor Hellebuyck. I trust Igor Shesterkin. I trust Andre Vasilevskiy. I think I trust Ilya Sorokin (probably?). That might be it.
Then there is the second tier of goalies that includes Jake Oettinger, Logan Thompson, the current version of Sergei Bobrovsky and maybe Darcy Kuemper. Or maybe Jeremy Swayman? What’s the difference between him and Linus Ullmark? Good luck figuring it out. They are all pretty good goalies with occasional moments of brilliance but are not consistently great like the first group.
Then there is quite literally everybody else.
You can win a Stanley Cup with Jordan Binnington and Adin Hill playing great, and then be forced to convince yourself they are still good when they turn back into Jordan Binnington and Adin Hill. Joey Daccord will play great enough one year to make you pay him big money, and then you are paying big money to Joey Daccord and wondering why you are paying big money to Joey Daccord.
Jarry and Skinner fall into the everybody else category.
Since the start of the 2023-24 season, the most recent extended stretch of hockey we have from both goalies, Jarry has appeared in 102 games with a .900 save percentage and is minus-4.3 goals saved above average. He has a .797 save percentage on high-danger shots in all situations.
Over that same time period Skinner has played in 133 games with an .899 save percentage and is minus-6.1 goals saved above average. He has a .793 save percentage on high-danger shots in all situations.
Virtually the same goalie.
The argument that you might be able to make in Jarry’s favor at this point is that since returning from his trip to the waiver-wire and American Hockey League in the middle of the 2024-25 season he has been the better goalie, and actually pretty decent. Both are statements of fact.
But what does that actually mean? Jarry playing well for a stretch of games is not a surprise. He has done that throughout his career, and at a rate that is not only better than his current level of play, but also at a legitimate All-Star level.
It also never lasts for more than 10-20 games at a time.
I went back over the careers of both players and looked at their rolling 10-game save percentages and compared them to the league averages in each season. Here they are side-by-side.
Skinner has hovered closer to the league average for most of his career. Jarry has had higher peaks, but significantly lower valleys. When he is good, he can be great. When he is bad, he can be awful.
Even when taking into account the declining league-wide save percentage in the NHL, Jarry’s current level of play versus the league average is not even close to what he has done at his best. So why should there be an assumption that this time his improved play is going to be any different long-term?
The answer is you should not. At least not until he proves it over an extend period of time. Maybe this time will be different?
Here they are overlayed on top of each other.
Good luck figuring out which of these guys you can count on.
Jarry has been a little better in the most recent sampling of games, but even those two numbers and performances are starting to regress back toward each other.
Jarry might play the better the rest of the way. It would not surprise me.
Skinner might play better the rest of the way. It would not surprise me.
Both of them will probably be wildly inconsistent and not what either team needs for its current objectives and goals.
We should expect this because that is what their careers have told us to expect from them as goalies.
At the end of the day the Penguins received a comparable goalie with no long-term commitment, opening up a future spot for their top goalie prospect, while also getting a serviceable defenseman this season that could actually be the most impactful of the two players arriving in Pittsburgh as part of the trade (and a future draft pick).
This is not an attempt to hedge bets on a prediction here. It is legitimately impossible to know who is going to play better. Good luck everybody.
