Jarry's continued excellence quiets Canucks, 4-1, for fourth win in a row

It's really hard to put into words how clutch Tristan Jarry has been for the Penguins over these past four games.

He posted the second-longest shutout streak of his career and the fifth-longest in franchise history over the past week, posting back-to-back shutouts in Montreal and Toronto. Combined with the time since his last goal allowed in the loss to the Sabres and the time until his lone goal allowed in the win in Winnipeg, he went 161:33 without allowing a single goal.

And he brought that confidence he gained on that Canadian road trip back home and once again came up big, stopping 36 of 37 shots in a 4-1 win over the Canucks at PPG Paints Arena, earning first-star honors.

"I thought Tristan was terrific again tonight," Mike Sullivan said. "You know, we gave up a fair amount of high-quality chances. We got a fair amount ourselves, but I thought we gave up a fair amount, more than we prefer. Tristan was there to make a lot of timely saves for us."

Jarry faced a total of seven high-danger shots against and stopped six, with the lone goal by Bo Horvat being just his second goal allowed in four games. He's made 116 saves on 118 shots faced over the last four games. He hasn't had an easy workload, and he's winning the Penguins games.

Before the Canadian road trip, Jarry had a GSAx (goals saved above expected) of .4. 

GSAx uses the stat xG (expected goals), which assigns a value to every shot attempt based on its location, shot type, and other factors based on the likelihood of that shot going in. If a team is taking a lot of high-danger shots, that's reflected in this stat. The end result is a figure of how many goals a team is expected to score over 60 minutes.

GSAx takes the xG and subtracts the actual goals allowed by the goaltender. If the result is a positive number, then the goaltender allowed fewer goals than expected given the quantity and quality of shots he faced. If the result is a negative number, he was underperforming and allowed more goals than he should have based on the workload.

With Jarry's GSAx right above zero, it means that he was performing just about average leading up to the road trip. He wasn't exactly blowing games for the Penguins (not counting a couple of those shootouts, at least) but he wasn't stealing them any games either.

In these past four games, the Penguins' expected goals against given the quantity and quality of shot attempts they were giving up totaled 8.86.

With Jarry in net for all four games, he allowed just two goals, giving him a GSAx of 6.86 for those four games.

Sullivan said in Winnipeg that Casey DeSmith was originally penciled in to start that game, but with the way Jarry had played in Montreal and Toronto, he forced the coaching staff to stick with the hot hand. 

If Jarry keeps playing the way he is, he's going to keep earning more.

"He's just seeing it right now," Sullivan said of Jarry's play as of late, "He looks really comfortable in the net. His rebound control is really good, his handles have been more decisive, and he's making good decisions when he does handle the puck. He's playing extremely well for us. That's one of the reasons why we've kind of rode him here over the last stretch of games. He's been playing extremely well."

John Marino upped the adjective, calling Jarry's play of late "unbelievable."

"He plays like that, and he gives us a chance," Marino said. "We kind of feed off it when he makes a big save like that. He had a couple of those in the first period too, we were able to get momentum off of."

I asked Bryan Rust what he's seen from Jarry over this stretch that has allowed him to have this kind of success, and he credited Jarry's play to "a ton of confidence."

"You can see him back there challenging shots, playing great, reading plays. I think his rebound control has been phenomenal. I think that kind of just helps us kill plays in our D zone. Anytime we can do that, I think that that helps our team. He's been phenomenal. It's been fun to watch."

MORE FROM THE GAME

• By any measure other than what showed on the actual scoreboard, the Penguins heavily outplayed the Canucks in the first period. The dam finally broke in the second. In a power play that carried over from the first period, Rust got the game's first goal 49 seconds into the middle frame:

It was Rust's first goal since the opener, a drought that he jokingly thanked reporters for not bringing up in his previous media availabilities.

"First of all, thanks to you guys for not bringing it up before tonight," Rust quipped. "But second of all, I think I've been there before, gone through streaks where I haven't produced, haven't played well, and got to just kind of stick with the process. ... You almost have to just simplify, and you just have to keep working. I tried to do that, and I was rewarded with the goal tonight. It was definitely -- you can tell by my celebration -- a bit of a relief, for sure."

• Evan Rodrigues extended the lead seven minutes later, and now ranks second on the team in goals (7) and points (14), trailing only Jake Guentzel in either category. He's two goals shy of his career high of nine, which he set in 2018-19 with the Sabres. It took him 74 games to hit nine goals that year, and it's taken 19 games to hit seven goals this year:

The goal was Rodrigues' 100th NHL point, an achievement that contributed to Jason Zucker choosing him for the postgame MVP helmet (which is evidently not very comfortable to wear):

"I don't know if he's surprising us," Sullivan said of Rodrigues' play. "You know, we've always felt like he has good offensive instincts. That's one of the things we really liked about his game."

• Zach Aston-Reese scored his first of the year with just under five minutes left in the second period off of a two-on-on with Brock McGinn that Teddy Blueger set up by forcing a turnover. Aston-Reese celebrated hard, and I don't think the smile left his face until he was in the locker room.

Canucks goaltender Thatcher Demko played for Boston College, and Aston-Reese saw a lot of him while at Northeastern.

"I think going back to college, I've had Demko's number," Aston-Reese said. "Seems like I've scored on him every level since college, so happy to get the first one out of the way and hopefully a lot more to come."

• Horvat snapped the shutout with 5:08 remaining in the game. 

• McGinn's empty-netter was his fifth goal of the year.

• Guentzel led with five shots on goal.

• Marino led in hits, with four.

• Sullivan said after the morning skate that he lets Sidney Crosby and Jeff Carter work it out among themselves who takes draws on the power play, with them going off of factors like the handedness of the opponent or just who happens to be having a better night in the faceoff circle. Carter took the majority of the faceoffs on the power play when the two were out there, winning one of the four he took. Crosby only took one faceoff on the power play and lost it.

• Carter scored his 400th career goal way back in the Penguins' second game in Sunrise, Fla., and the team celebrated the milestone with a pregame ceremony.  I don't know how many tribute videos the Penguins have ever done that began with a Flyers draft selection followed by some Flyers goal highlights, but I'd imagine that there haven't been many:

The Penguins presented Carter with a plaque and the NHL's traditional Tiffany & Co. crystal piece to celebrate the milestone. Carter's wife Megan and their two children were on the ice for it, and Carter's son didn't stop waving at the crowd the whole time, he was loving it.

• Before you ask, I don't know why Kris Letang has a mustache now. Could be a late Movember entry, could be a Mustache Boy drill we don't know about.

• Happy 86th birthday to Eddie Johnston. The Penguins recognized his birthday on the videoboard in the third period, and he stood up and waved to the crowd, drawing applause. He was in the press box for the game, as usual.

• It wasn't quite a sellout, but it was close. The Penguins sold 17,590 tickets, a few hundred short of a sellout.

• Four of those tickets were sold to a group of fans who dressed as officials, helmets and all, and stood up and went wild anytime a penalty was announced. It was hilarious.

• Both actual referees in this game -- Furman South and Brandon Blandina -- are Robert Morris alumni.

THE ESSENTIALS

• Boxscore
• Live file
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics

THE THREE STARS

As selected at PPG Paints Arena:

1. Tristan Jarry, Penguins
2. Brock McGinn, Penguins
3. Evan Rodrigues, Penguins

THE HIGHLIGHTS

THE INJURIES

• Forward Evgeni Malkin is expected to miss the first two months of the season while recovering from his knee surgery. He has been skating with Ty Hennes.

THE LINEUPS

Sullivan’s lines and pairings:

Jake Guentzel - Sidney Crosby - Bryan Rust
Jason Zucker - Jeff Carter - Kasperi Kapanen
Dominik Simon - Evan Rodrigues - Danton Heinen
Zach Aston-Reese - Teddy Blueger - Brock McGinn

Brian Dumoulin - Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson - John Marino
Mike Matheson - Chad Ruhwedel

And for Travis Green's Canucks:

Tanner Pearson - Bo Horvat - Tyler Motte
Vasily Podkolzin - Elias Pettersson - Conor Garland
Nils Hoglander - J.T. Miller - Brock Boeser
Jason Dickinson - Juho Lammikko - Alex Chiasson

Oliver Ekman-Larsson - Tyler Myers
Quinn Hughes - Tucker Poolman
Kyle Burroughs - Luke Schenn

THE SCHEDULE

The Penguins were originally scheduled to practice Thursday but canceled it after the game. They'll travel to Long Island to play the Islanders in the brand new UBS Arena on Friday.

THE CONTENT

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