Kovacevic: If Jarry doesn't know how he's bounced back ... that's OK

Tristan Jarry's blissfully oblivious. That has to be it.

And I'll bet it goes beyond hockey, to his broader life. I'll bet he jaywalks across Stanwix Street with buses and cars beeping and crashing, sirens wailing, flames stretching to the sky, while he never breaks stride.

I'm talking at a Leslie Nielsen level:

I'm talking at a level where he wouldn't be able to recall a single sequence from that playoff series with the Islanders last spring, even if you spotted him the Josh and the Bailey.

Really, good luck concocting any other explanation for how this young man, in the span of a few short months, has evolved from this ...

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... to all this:

Sorry, I'm speechless at this stage. And not just because that sampling up there represents but a small slice of his superhuman 27-save performance in the Penguins' 3-2 shootout victory over the Jets in this Sunday matinee at PPG Paints Arena. It was his best of the season and, for what it's worth, one of the best I've ever covered in this building.

But also, and maybe more so, because it's anything but an aberration, as his statistics and NHL rankings among goaltenders with 25-plus starts will authoritatively attest through the precise midpoint of his team's schedule:

• Goals-against average: 2.09, third
• Save percentage: .928, third
• High-danger save percentage: .857, sixth
• Wins: 22, tied for second
• Games played: 33, tied for second

And yeah, that last one really leaps out. Not necessarily for the right reasons, either. But on an afternoon where he shared the rink with the league's resident iron man at the position -- Connor Hellebuyck was routinely making his 12th consecutive start in the Winnipeg crease -- it should stand out all the more that Jarry's now logged one more game than the 2020 Vezina Trophy winner, and that he's done so without slipping in the slightest.

I couldn't help but ask Mike Sullivan if maybe the Penguins see Jarry as having Hellebuyck-type potential in that regard.

"Well, we've given Tristan one of the more heavy workloads in the league," he began. "And he's handled it extremely well, to this point. He's played really sound hockey for us. I thought he had a terrific game today. And so, is he a guy who can manage a heavy workload and is at his best with a heavy workload? To this point, he's shown an ability to handle it. But moving forward, I just think it's important that we manage that workload, as well. We're aware of that and we're going to try to do that moving forward to put Tristan in the best position to be successful. But to this point, he's had a heavy workload, and he's handled it extremely well."

Hm. Guess anyone's free to read into whatever that might mean as it relates to the backup. Sullivan's now palpably leery of using Casey DeSmith, and I saw Louis Domingue wheel by the interview area with his leg cast laid up on a scooter. So the next move there almost has to be Ron Hextall's.

But it still feels worth wondering, as Sullivan worded it in that reply, if Jarry might simply be "at his best with a heavy workload."

Historically, lots of goaltenders are, extending way back. The position's changed over the years, as has how general managers and coaches navigate the roster composition and usage. It's almost as common now to have rotating starters as it is to have a Hellebuyck. And if Jarry, who hadn't been a full-time starter in the NHL until last season, can continue to build confidence within this workload, there might be merit to considering some form of that approach.

Put it this way: Come playoffs, he will be alone. And it'd only help, I'd think, that he enters with complete assurance that he can hold up for two straight months. Maybe that's trying him for a few in a row through the regular season, then assigning rest in spells. Maybe that's just letting him ride. Hey, he's 26, and the pandemic's generally afforded everyone a lighter load than the norm.

Remember Jarry's answer in Montreal when I asked if he could handle starting all the time?

"It's been awesome," he came right back with a big smile.

Sure looks that way.

If nothing else, it might present the only viable answer to how he's been able to flip his career script as he has.

Heaven knows asking Jarry himself hasn't worked for me, and it didn't again after this one:

Good Lord. I've got not a negative syllable to say about this kid, but I asked if he could keep adding confidence from a performance like this against Hellebuyck and Winnipeg's soaring start, and he replied, "Yeah, they're a great team. They play a hard game. They're a heavy team. And I think they put a lot of pucks on net, and they have a good transition game. And they forecheck hard. I think that was something that we struggled with at the beginning and I think we kind of caught ourselves in the third period, we started to put a lot pucks on net, going to the net, and you see some of the goals that we scored were not exactly picture-perfect, but they end up going in and it gives us a huge momentum swing for our team and it helps us get back in it."

That's how those go. Ask the goaltender about the goaltender, even citing that playoff series as a reference, and he'll respond with something about his team or the other team, and always within the context of the game that was just played. Even previous games seem to be out of sight, out of mind.

Leave it to noted truth-teller Kris Letang to come closest, I think, to the reality, and his answer to my question's got to be seen to be fully grasped:

Catch those couple of diabolical grins?

"Some people, they would let creep in their mind what happened last year," he replied. "But no, he's focused on being in the moment. He forgets about things. He just works hard in practice. He's in his own bubble, like most of the goalies, a guy who lives in the present and he's just gonna focus on doing the right thing in that moment. He's a laid back guy, doesn't get too worried. It looks like he's played like 20 years already."

Yeah, that. All of that.

I'll struggle to say this without sounding insulting -- and again, that's hardly the intention -- but I'm not sure he remembers the six goals he gave up last week in Los Angeles, much less anything that went awry on Long Island. Bear in mind that, when he did beat the Islanders this season, Nov. 26 in Elmont, N.Y., he barely had a reaction, saying afterward, "It’s just another game against a different team."

The week ahead has four more games against different teams, all at home: Coyotes, Kraken, Red Wings and those Kings again.

Imagine all the recurring nightmares of that L.A. loss he won't be having in the interim.

JOE SARGENT / GETTY

Jake Guentzel's backhander is rejected by the Jets' Connor Hellebuyck in the first period.

• Thanks in large part to officiating that ranged from bad to brutal, the Jets dominated the Penguins through two periods like no other team had all season, including physically with a 31-7 edge in hits. I don't cite hit stats often, as they're seldom reflective -- and occasionally counterintuitive -- when it comes to gauging possession. But in this case, they were everything. It was boom, boom, boom with very little bite back.

Oh, and four forwards going down in the first period alone, including Teddy Blueger felled for the day by a head shot from Winnipeg defenseman Brenden Dillon, which I'll get to in a bit.

"They're a good team," Dillon said of the Penguins. "They have a lot of speed and a lot of skill and, usually, those kinds of teams don’t want to play that kind of game. I think we had a focus of using our forecheck and our size."

No doubt. But it helped the visitors that the Penguins seemed content to face Winnipeg's forwards, their strength, rather than the defense, their weakness. And it wasn't until they finally began to attack Hellebuyck the only way a team can when he's at his peak -- lots of pressure, pucks, bodies, sticks deep in the zone -- that they scored twice in a nine-second span of the third period to tie, 2-2:

One off Kasperi Kapanen's skate, the other a random fire from a severe angle by Jeff Carter.

"You know, the game goes from what should be a shutout to an overtime shootout loss," Hellebuyck said. "It sucks."

• Hellebuyck was beaten under his blocker arm on Sidney Crosby's shootout winner, which I still can't believe I saw. Especially once he slows to a crawl, there isn't a goaltender in the solar system who shouldn't know what's next -- five-hole, of course -- but Sid used that as a carrot:

• Not to get all existential here, but Sid also was assessed a penalty for slashing Connor as the clock expired in overtime. For which he had to serve ... nothing. And that's a strange little loophole the NHL would do well to close at some point. There can't ever be a stage of any game where it's OK to commit penalties, even minors.

My solution: Anyone committing a penalty in the final two minutes of overtime can't partake in the shootout.

Which, obviously, would've made a difference here, since Sid was the only one to score.

• Right after Sid converted, Jarry did this to Mark Scheifele:

And on the day, that might've ranked somewhere outside his top 10 stops. Seriously.

• Once Pierre-Luc Dubois banged one off the glass to end the shootout, Jarry had quite the reaction:

Inspiring this verbal message inside the locker room from Mike Matheson:

The room-wide reaction's priceless.

• To repeat, the Jets dominated the Penguins through two periods. But man, it'll be a great day for hockey in Pittsburgh when the dialogue in such settings can advance beyond blaming anything and everything on Evgeni Malkin, his effect on chemistry or whatever, every blessed time stuff goes wrong.

No, things haven't been perfect since his return, but Malkin's not responsible for Evan Rodrigues going eight games now without a solitary point. Nor for Danton Heinen scoring once in his past 11 games. Nor for all the other forwards still slipping out of the lineup. Nor for the grind of a schedule that's seen the Penguins play 10 games across 19 days and three time zones.

Geno's got three goals and four assists in seven games since his return. A point a game. He's doing fine. So's the team. Other than some supporting-cast struggles that aren't at all his fault.

• Sometimes, we can all be guilty of over-analyzing dubious hits in hockey. Dillon's left skate, for example, stayed on the ice, so he couldn't be guilty of charging Blueger. That sort of thing.

Sullivan's summation was all that was needed: "I thought it was a hit to the head."

Know why he thought that?

Because it was:

The principal point of contact's the head. Hard stop.

The refs on the ice told Sullivan they didn't see it. The NHL needs to respond with a suspension upon reviewing it.

• All four officials -- referees Kevin Pollock and Dean Morton, linesmen Jesse Marquis and Dan Kelly -- were abysmal. Zero clue. Zero control. Created a dangerous atmosphere.

And as ever when officials are bad, it's both ways. As my friend Mike McIntyre of the Winnipeg Free Press tweeted from the far end of the press box ... 

• Revisiting what matters most: That's five wins in a row, 16 in the past 18 games, and 26-10-5 at the halfway point, one point behind the Rangers for first place in the Metro with a game in hand, fifth overall in the league.

And they aren't playing their best.

• Except for one.

THE ESSENTIALS

• Boxscore
• Live file
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics

THE THREE STARS

As selected at PPG PAints Arena:

1. Tristan Jarry, Penguins
2. Jeff Carter, Penguins
3. Kyle Connor, Jets

THE HIGHLIGHTS

THE INJURIES

• Teddy Blueger, forward, is being evaluated for an injury to his face sustained in this game.

• Zach Aston-Reese, forward, is day-to-day with a lower-body injury sustained Friday in Columbus.

• Drew O'Connor, forward, is week-to-week with an upper-body injury. He was put on LTIR retroactive to Jan. 15. 

• Jason Zucker, forward, is week-to-week with a lower-body injury. He was put on IR Thursday.

• Louis Domingue, goaltender, is week-to-week with a right foot injury. He was put on IR Thursday.

THE LINEUPS

Sullivan’s lines and pairings:

Guentzel-Crosby-Rust
Heinen-Malkin-Rodrigues
Simon-Carter-Kapanen
Boyle-Blueger-McGinn

Dumoulin-Letang
Pettersson-Marino
Matheson-Ruhwedel

And for Dave Lowry's Jets:

Copp-Scheifele-Wheeler
Connor-Dubois-Perfetti
Stastny-Lowry-Poganski
Harkins-Toninato-Vesalainen

Morrissey-Schmidt
Dillon-Pionk
Samberg-Beaulieu

THE SCHEDULE

The Penguins are off Monday. Next game is the next night against Arizona, 7:08 p.m. faceoff. Bring hot dogs.

THE CONTENT

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