Pressure is on Tristan Jarry to win back trust of Penguins coaching staff

The Penguins decision to start Joel Blomqvist on Saturday night in Toronto is an eye-opening decision.

You do not need to overthink it very much to see what the Pittsburgh Penguins coaching staff currently thinks of Tristan Jarry.

Or how much confidence they might have in him.

The answer is, quite clearly, very little.

All you have to do is consider the facts going back to the end of the 2023-24 season.

— With a playoff spot on the line and the Penguins playing a series of must-win games down the stretch, Jarry found himself on the bench in place of backup Alex Nedeljkovic.

— When the Penguins were mathematically eliminated from playoff contention at the end of the season, Jarry still did not get a start in a meaningless game to end the regular season after Nedeljkovic had played pretty much every meaningful game prior to that. That was a big message sent.

— After getting the opening night start this season — and allowing six goals — the Penguins turned to rookie Joel Blomqvist in Game 2, which was an expected move given the back-to-back situation.

— What was not expected was Blomqvist getting the start in Game 3 on Saturday in Toronto after picking up a win — and playing extremely well — against Detroit.

This would have been the game a team goes back to its starter.

But the Penguins instead opted to turn back to a rookie with no NHL experience outside of his debut start this season for a road game against a playoff team.

That speaks volumes.

It is hard to argue that was head coach MIke Sullivan riding the hot hand, because it is only the third game of the season and each goalie had only started one game. There is no hot hand at this point. I also don’t necessarily think it was about rewarding Blomqvist for a strong debut or giving him another start before he goes back down to the AHL when Nedeljkovic returns. This seemed like another pretty big statement on the Penguins not fully trusting their $5 million goalie.

Because now we are at a point where out of their past 20 regular season games, a fully healthy Jarry has started just four of them.

He finished only three of them.

When you break down the numbers, the Penguins are 10-3-3 in the games started by Nedeljkovic and Blomqvist with at least a league average save percentage in the .904 range during those starts.

They are 0-4 in the game started by Jarry, with only an .846 save percentage.

Yes, that is a very small sampling of data over parts of two seasons. But it also just confirms how much of an issue Jarry’s play has been and how troubling it appears to be to the Penguins coaching staff.

His career has been defined by maddening inconsistency to this point, and even though he has been in the league for parts of nine seasons (believe it) and started 247 regular season games in the NHL (time flies, doesn’t it?), we are still sitting here wondering what type of goalie he is and what the Penguins have in him.

But maybe we shouldn’t be wondering anymore.

Maybe we have our answer, and maybe the Penguins are starting to come to the realization that perhaps he is not the guy and that their decision to re-sign him was a missed evaluation.

He has had stretches of games where he has played like a No. 1 goalie, and has been named to two All-Star Games.

But he has consistently fallen off in the second half of seasons and never been reliable when the Penguins have needed him most. Not in the stretch runs of the regular seasons. Not in the playoffs. It all finally seems to be reaching its breaking point.

There is only one way that changes back in his favor, and it is pretty obvious what that is. He has to play better when he gets his next opportunity, whenever that might be. Then he has to keep playing better and showing that he is capable of some sort of consistency. The problem, again, is that after nine years and almost 250 starts that has simply never really happened with him.

Jarry was already going to be under pressure and be a huge X-factor this season when it came to the success or failure of the Penguins. Now it is pretty clear he is under a different type of pressure. Doing enough to prove he is still actually the Penguins’ starting goalie.