Stats 'N' At: Why Jarry's rise is real taken in Downtown (Penguins)

Tristan Jarry laughs before the game Tuesday night at PPG Paints Arena. - GETTY

A few years ago, the Penguins emerged as improbable champions thanks in no small part to an upstart goalie who stole playing time, and eventually the No. 1 job, from one who had already hoisted the Stanley Cup.

Could history be repeating itself in 2019-20 with Tristan Jarry?

At one point, Jarry was considered a superior goaltending prospect to Matt Murray. But that was eons ago. In the years since, Jarry had fallen behind. He entered 2019-20 coming off an unremarkable year in the AHL. He was third on the organizational depth chart, behind Murray and Casey DeSmith, and he made the NHL roster this fall at least in part because of salary cap and waiver wire considerations.

All Jarry has done since then is stuff opponents, earn an All-Star trip to St. Louis, and position himself for a healthy raise as a restricted free agent next offseason. Let's take a closer look at Jarry's ascendant season.

Before this season, Jarry had a brief and mostly vanilla NHL resume. In 29 career games, he had compiled a .906 save percentage. His goals allowed rate was four percent worse than the NHL average, once you adjust for the league-wide offensive environment. But in 2019-20, Jarry's save rate has jumped to .932. That's tied with Dallas' Anton Khudobin for the NHL lead among goalies. Jarry's adjusted save rate is 26 percent above average. That's not only the best among goalies with 20+ starts this season, it's also one of the best in Penguins franchise history among those meeting that 20 game threshold.

In the graph below, 100 is league average and a number below 100 means the goalie was better than his peers:

As that list demonstrates, a brief run of dominance doesn't ensure staying power. We won't know for a while whether Jarry is more like Murray and Fleury, or more like Ty Conklin. But the 24-year-old Jarry, selected in the second round of the 2013 draft, is killing it so far.

Jarry's five-on-five save rate is .941, according to the Corsica Hockey website, which is second-best among all goalies who have played at least 1,000 minutes at even strength (Tuukka Rask is first at .942). And it's not just a case of the defensively responsible Penguins making it easy on him. With Jarry in net, the Penguins have allowed 1.6 odd-man rush attempts per 60 minutes of five-on-five play, according to Natural Stat Trick. That's 16th out of 32 goalies with at least 1,000 minutes at even strength, and it's actually higher than the rate faced by Murray so far (1.4). Jarry's facing 7.2 high-danger shot attempts per 60 minutes--those with the best chances of becoming a goal based on factors like shot type, shot location, and odd-man rushes. That's seventh-lowest among goalies, and close to Murray's rate (7.3).

Rather, Jarry has been a brick wall no matter the shot threat level. He's stopping the shots that he should, with a .993 low-danger save rate during five-on-five play (second-best among goalies with 1,000-plus minutes), but he's also excelling in situations that make other goalies sweat. Jarry's medium-danger save rate is .916 (ninth-best in the league), and his high-danger rate is .829 (seventh-best).

Based on the quality of shots faced, Jarry's five-on-five save rate "should" be .929, per Corsica Hockey. That means he has outperformed his expected save rate like few others this season. The difference between his actual five-on-five save rate (.941) and expected rate (.929) is the third-largest (in a good way) among all goalies in 2019-20, trailing just Connor Hellebuyck and Robin Lehner.

Jarry has clearly outplayed Murray, who lugs an adjusted save rate that's 14 percent below average into his next start. But before we get too carried away, it's important to remember that Murray has been very good overall in a much larger body of work (his career adjusted save rate is four percent above average in nearly 190 games) and that the Penguins don't have to choose one of these guys--at least not yet. Much like during those 2015-16 and 2016-17 Cup runs, coach Mike Sullivan can ride a pair of starting-caliber goalies to the promised land and worry about contract extensions and expansion drafts later.

MORE PENGUINS

Penguins without Sid: Sidney Crosby missed more than two months of the 2019-20 season while recovering from a core muscle injury. For most teams, losing arguably the game's best and most well-rounded player would be a devastating blow. The Penguins, though, just soldiered on and played elite hockey. During Crosby's absence, Pittsburgh ranked first in points percentage (.714), sixth in percentage of total scoring chances generated (53) and sixth in percentage of total goals scored (54.8). They also did part of that while playing without Jake Guentzel since he suffered a potentially season-ending shoulder injury. The power play didn't exactly thrive without him and is wheezing along with an overall success rate of 18.9 percent (19th in the NHL), but it's incredible that a Crosby-less Penguins team that suffered an avalanche of other injuries to prominent players remains near the top of the standings.

Split them up: Mike Sullivan likes to pair defensemen with different and, ideally, complementary skill sets. And it's hard to think of two blue liners different than Kris Letang and Jack Johnson. But so far, this duo just isn't working out--and might be dragging down an All-Star's play in the process. When Letang skates with Johnson during five-on-five play, the Penguins are generating just 49.9 percent of the game's total shots, 51.2 percent of scoring chances and 41.7 percent of goals, according to Natural Stat Trick. When Letang takes the ice without Johnson, the Penguins are getting 57.6 percent of shots, 58 percent of scoring chances and 60 percent of goals. It might be time to explore other options until Brian Dumoulin returns.

STEELERS

Johnson's rookie year: From Hines Ward to Mike Wallace to Antonio Brown to JuJu Smith-Schuster, the Steelers have proven that they can draft and develop high-quality wide receivers beyond the first round. Diontae Johnson looks like the next in line. The third-round pick out of Toledo turned in a season in which he ranked second in receptions (59), seventh in yards (680) and third in catch rate (64.1 percent) among Steelers rookie wide outs during the post-merger era (1970-present). The 5-foot-10, 183 pound water bug demonstrated his toughness by ranking tied for second among wide receivers in broken tackles (nine) He also earned All-Pro honors for leading all qualified NFL players in punt return average (12.4 yards), and he had the regular season's longest punt return--an 85-yard scamper to the end zone versus the Arizona Cardinals on December 8, 2019. During a year where practically nothing went right on offense, Johnson's emergence was an importance development.

O-line decline: Through a combination of first-round investments and savvy undrafted and late-round finds, the Steelers have long had one of the game's best offensive lines. Despite the team sending two players from that unit to the Pro Bowl, that wasn't the case in 2019. The Steelers ranked 30th in the NFL in Adjusted Line Yards (ALY), which is a Football Outsiders stat that measures an offensive line's success in creating space for running backs and adjusts for the down, distance, game score and opponent quality. Yards gained closer to the line of scrimmage are assigned more to the lineman, compared to yards gained downfield by running backs. With an average of 3.84 ALY, Pittsburgh was way below the 4.26 league average and placed ahead of only the Jets (3.8) and Dolphins (3.17). The Steelers were 15th in ALY in 2018 and seventh in 2017. The pass protection suffered, too, with the Steelers ranking 12th in adjusted sack rate (6.6 percent of passing plays). They placed fourth in 2018 and first in 2017. When you see a multi-year decline with an aging group, it's cause for concern.

• Room for improvement: The Steelers' defense is teeming with elite young talent, but the team's 2018 first-round pick didn't make a great leap forward in year two. If anything, Terrell Edmunds seemingly backslid. Edmunds allowed a 72.5 percent catch rate in 2019, according to Pro Football Reference's advanced defensive stats. In 2018, he allowed a 59.5 percent catch rate. Opposing QBs had a 139.1 passer rating when targeting him in coverage, compared to 83 as a rookie. And he whiffed more often, with his missed tackle rate rising to 9.5 percent from six percent in 2018. Edmunds is just about to turn 23, but he's one of the few players on that side of the ball who needs to make significant improvement next season.

PIRATES

Another framer: Stop me if you've heard this before: The Pirates have signed a catcher who carries a sterling defensive reputation and is an out machine at the plate. At one point, John Ryan Murphy was considered one of the better catching prospects in the minors. But the former Yankee, Twin, Diamondback and Brave hit an offensive wall at Triple-A and has settled in as a Luke Maile-esque depth catcher. Murphy's park and league-adjusted OPS in more than 650 MLB plate appearances is 34 percent worse than the overall league average. But, on the positive side, Murphy's pitch-framing has saved +15 runs for his team compared to an average defensive catcher, according to Fangraphs. With Murphy joining Jacob Stallings and Maile, the Pirates now have three of the game's better pitch-framers. Can any of them hit, though?

 A little help? So, which Pirates pitchers might benefit most from the Pirates skilled pitch-framers? It would be the guys who throw the most pitches around the borders of the strike zone, right? According to MLB Statcast, the players who had the highest percentage of pitches thrown around the edges of the zone in 2019 were Joe Musgrove (45.5 percent), Steven Brault (43 percent) and Chris Archer (41.7 percent). If the rotation hopes to rebound from a dreadful season, stealing more strikes on the corners would certainly help.

 Look! A free agent! The Pirates signed a real-life, honest-to-goodness MLB free agent recently. It's hard to get all that excited about Guillermo Heredia, though. The 28-year-old outfielder has mostly scuffled offensively (his career adjusted OPS is 18 percent below the MLB average), and he has been absolute terror--to his own team--on the bases (he has six career stolen bases and 12 caught stealings). If you're looking for something positive, he's better against left-handed pitching (career .737 OPS) than Gregory Polanco (.638), and Heredia has been an excellent defender in the corner outfield spots (+15 runs saved compared to an average fielder, per Fangraphs' Defensive Runs Saved). It's faint praise, but it's something.

THE NATIONAL TREND

All-time playoff performances: During the NFL's divisional round, we witnessed two of the league's all-time best performances during that stage of the playoffs. Kansas City's Patrick Mahomes posted a 134.6 passer rating versus the Texans, which is the sixth-best ever in the divisional round among QBs with at least 30 passing attempts. Kurt Warner (143 rating during the 2000 season) tops the list. Tennessee's Derrick Henry, meanwhile, racked up 202 yards from scrimmage while steamrolling the Ravens. That is sixth-highest in the divisional round among running backs (Eric Dickerson is king, with 244 scrimmage yards in 1986). We're in for one epic AFC Championship game.

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Stats ‘N’ At is a weekly feature that takes a deep dive into the numbers that define our city's sports scene.

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