You could make a case that the Penguins' 6-1 loss to the Devils Thursday night at PPG Paints Arena was their second-worst loss of the season.
Their only other loss by a five-goal margin came back in November, a 6-1 loss to the Capitals on the road.
Unlike the loss in Washington, the Penguins actually managed to control a handful of significant stretches of play in this game, even if they had nothing to show for it.
Tristan Jarry played the full 60 minutes in that loss, stopping 26 of 32 shots. No goaltender who lets in six goals in a game is having a great game, but you also couldn't pin much of that loss on Jarry. Mike Sullivan certainly didn't, noting that "when you look at the scoring chances they scored on, they were pretty high-quality" after that game in November.
Jarry started Thursday's contest against the Devils. Casey DeSmith finished it. Jarry was yanked after allowing five goals on 19 shots faced, the first game this season in which he's been pulled.
While Jarry certainly wasn't at his best in this one, he can't be faulted much for the result, either. As was the case in the other 6-1 loss this season, Jarry was hung out to dry by the players in front of him.
This game was already decided before much of the late-arriving weeknight crowd got to their seats, with the Devils jumping to an 3-0 lead by the 6:44 mark of the first period.
"I thought the first couple of goals they got, they were tough saves, I'll tell you that," Sullivan said when I asked him about Jarry's performance after the game. "They were tough saves."
Breaking it down goal-by-goal, it's easy to see how Jarry was hung out to dry.
The first goal began with of a two-on-one with Jesper Bratt and Nico Hischier, with John Marino as the only man back and Marcus Pettersson caught trailing. Marino had a nice sliding play to break up the two-on-one, but in the chaos that ensued in front of Jarry's cage, a loose puck went through the legs of Pettersson to Bratt on the other side of the cage, who quickly put it off the body of Jarry and in before Jarry even had a chance of sliding over to that side of his crease:
There's a lot that went wrong leading up to that goal. Not much the goaltender could have done to save it.
Bratt scored the Devils' second goal of the game shortly after, set up by a beautiful feed by ... Evan Rodrigues. He didn't seem to be aware of Dougie Hamilton right on his tail, and it was Hamilton's stick on the stick of Rodrigues that caused the turnover. Bratt put the puck just by Marino and past the shoulder of Jarry:
Not an impossible save for Jarry to make, but much like the first goal, there were huge mistakes by the players in front of him.
The Penguins just totally lost track of Yegor Sharangovich on the third goal. He somehow got left on his own island. So when Pettersson lost the puck and P.K. Subban was able to recover it, the wide-open Sharangovich made for an easy target:
That's a tough save for a goaltender to make.
The Penguins emerged from the first period unscathed any further, and managed to put together a much stronger start in the middle frame. The Penguins outshot the Devils 12-0 to open the period, but it was the Devils who got the first goal of the period. Dawson Mercer's tally came on the Devils' first shot of the second period, coming at the 9:24 mark.
Pettersson attempted to recover the puck behind the Penguins' net and pass it to Marino, but flubbed it. Jack Hughes swept in and picked up the puck and set up Mercer in front, who buried it with a one-timer that went top-shelf:
The Devils got a power play later in the period, and Damon Severson scored New Jersey's fifth goal of the game. The shot was clocked at 89.7 miles per hour, and traveled through traffic on the way in. Again, not an impossible save, but it's not a soft goal to let up by any means:
That tally marked the end of Jarry's night, with DeSmith coming off of the bench and finishing game in relief. DeSmith played well to finish the game, stopping 16 of 17 shots faced.
The goaltending switch wasn't exactly a statement on Jarry's play, though. Sullivan was looking to wake his team up, and a switch in goal can often be the spark that a team needs.
"I just thought at the time, our team needed a change," Sullivan explained. "That was the main reason why I did it. It wasn't necessarily because I thought (Jarry) was playing poorly. Like I said, the first few goals that they scored, If Tristan did make the save, they would have been great saves. So you can take that for what it's worth."
The switch in goal didn't spark the Penguins toward a win, but the players still got the message.
"I don't think we gave (Jarry) a lot of help," Sidney Crosby said. "He gave us some pretty good opportunities. That's something that we've got to be better defensively as a group and limit those chances. I think eventually things will come from there."
Those things need to come sooner rather than later.
