WINNIPEG, Manitoba -- Two things became a little more clear after the Penguins' 6-3 loss to the Jets here in Winnipeg, Manitoba on Sunday.
First, it's Alex Nedeljkovic's net moving forward. And second, it doesn't matter in the slightest who is in net if they aren't getting any help in front of them.
Mike Sullivan declined to name his starting goaltender in his pregame media availability on Sunday, which is a rarity for him. He's unlike many coaches in that he'll always decline to share lineup changes when it comes to skaters ahead of time, but I can't recall him ever declining to share the starting goaltender. With Nedeljkovic, Tristan Jarry and Joel Blomqvist all healthy and on this western Canada trip, Sullivan said that they're "going to make everybody game-time decisions" when asked for Sunday's starting goaltender.
Of course, the goaltender wasn't actually a game-time decision. They knew. But had Sullivan disclosed that Nedeljkovic would have been starting, the obvious follow-up question would have been to ask who would be backing up ... and answering that would have made it known that Jarry would be a healthy scratch -- a deserved but obviously awkward scenario for the goaltender who is supposed to be the Penguins' No. 1.
Nedeljkovic, making his season debut after suffering an injury in the preseason, was fine in the loss. Five goals against doesn't exactly sound phenomenal on paper, but he was tested heavily and made 31 saves in the effort, including 11 saves on 14 high-danger attempts -- way too many for a team to be allowing in one game. The goals he let in were largely rebound attempts or deflections -- one even going in off his own defenseman in Marcus Pettersson.
"None of the goals were on him," Pettersson told me after the loss. "They were grade-A looks, all of them. He looked confident, he looked sharp. He played good."
Erik Karlsson said that he doesn't think Nedeljkovic "could have done anything different."
"A couple of tap-in goals and stuff like that," Karlsson said of what got by Nedeljkovic. "That's the way it is. So, you know, a solid performance from him. And unfortunately we can't clean up and keep the game a little bit tighter."
For some time, Nedeljkovic seemed to be on the way to a No. 1 star performance in a win. Kevin Hayes opened the scoring in the second period with a power-play goal, and Lars Eller doubled the lead minutes later. But momentum started to swing in the second half of the middle frame, and Winnipeg capitalized with three goals to carry a lead into the second intermission. A second goal from Eller tied it in the third period, but two more goals from the Jets put the game away before a late empty-net goal capped it off.
"He made a lot of really, really big saves for us on a few other shots," Bryan Rust said of Nedeljkovic. "He gave us a chance, kept us in there, and gave us a lead for a long period of time."
Two things can be true: Jarry was underperforming, and that's why he wasn't even the backup for this game. But regardless of who is in net, they aren't getting any help from the skaters in front of them defensively. You can put prime Patrick Roy in there, and he's probably still taking a fair amount of losses behind a team this loose defensively.
Some numbers to back up that Jarry just hasn't been good enough, if the "eye test" wasn't enough:
• Jarry's stat line of a 5.47 goals-against average and .836 save percentage through three games is obviously bad. But it doesn't really tell you much about how he's standing up to the actual workload. A hypothetical goaltender behind a terrible team allowing 40-plus shots on goal a night is almost always going to have a bad stat line, for example.
• The stat that measures how a goaltender is standing up to the workload is GSAx -- goals saved above expected. All it does is take expected goals (which is a dumb-sounding name for the metric that just takes the quality and quantity of chances and adds it all up to tell you how many goals would be scored on average in the league) and shows how the actual goals allowed stand up. Per MoneyPuck's model, Jarry's expected goals against through those three games is 10.28, but he let in 12. So, his GSAx is minus-1.72. The website Natural Stat Trick uses as slightly different model, and calculates Jarry's expected goals against at 8.51, which would have his GSAx at minus-3.49, meaning he's allowed 3-4 more goals than he should have. Either way, the data shows that he's underperforming even when you take into account the weak defense in front of him.
• For context MoneyPuck calculates Blomqvist's GSAx as plus-1.9, and Natural Stat Trick calculates his as plus-0.33. Blomqvist and Jarry have faced similar workloads in terms of quantity and quality of shots, but the difference is the rookie has handled the task better.
And here's just how rough the Penguins as a team have been defensively to start the season, regardless of who is in net:
• In all situations, the Penguins average 62.33 shot attempts against per 60 minutes of ice time (22nd in the league).
• The Penguins allow 46.96 unblocked shot attempts against per 60 minutes (27th in the league).
• The Penguins allow 15.37 high-danger attempts against per 60 minutes (30th in the league).
• The Penguins allow 34.3 shots on goal per 60 minutes (31st in the league).
Again, it doesn't matter who is in net. Yeah, it should be Nedeljkovic's net for the time being. But Nedeljkovic isn't fixing any of the above. And the guys in front of him know that.
"Overall, as the season has gone so far, we're too loose," Pettersson said. "We play off guys a little bit, and teams make you pay in this league for that. We give way too many slot shots and grade-A opportunities, and we've got to clean that up."
Karlsson said that the goals that the goalies have let in this season have been "too easy" -- not in the sense that they're soft goals, but in the sense that the skaters have made things too easy on the opposing shooters.
"A lot of pucks laying around the net," Karlsson said. "Instead of us clearing it away, they get to tap it in. And as a goalie, I think there's nothing you can do about those. I think that (Nedeljkovic) made the stops that he was supposed to and then some, and gave us the chance to to be in this game. Especially in the third, in the first, I think he played unbelievable."
Sullivan said that when it comes to fixing the Penguins' issues defensively, "it starts with the right mindset."
"We're quick to try to jump on the offense," Sullivan said. "We don't have the puck, and we end up putting ourselves and our teammates in tough spots. So I think we've got to have more of a mindset of playing defense-first and recognizing when they don't have control or if it is a question of control. And I think in few of the instances tonight, that was the case."
As the Penguins work to solve those issues, Nedeljkovic should backstop them along the way, but goaltending will remain something the Penguins must figure out at some point. It's not ideal to carry around three goaltenders, and it's not ideal to have a $5.375 million player of any position watching games from the press box. Performance will dictate how exactly everything plays out. For now, the door is open for Nedeljkovic to take over the No. 1 role.
"You go out, you show up, and you focus on yourself," Nedeljkovic said of his mindset. "Worry about what you can control, do your best, put yourself in a good situation to eventually have success when your name's called, to try to make the most of the opportunity. Joel's been playing really well. He's been keeping us in wins, and he's been deserving of the net. At this level, that's what's going to happen: Playing well and winning games, or at least giving us a chance to win consistently, is going to get the net."
