Blomqvist 'unbelievable' in big win, shows he deserves to stick around

WASHINGTON -- If this was Joel Blomqvist's last game in the NHL for a little while, he'll leave on a high note. 

But then again, maybe he really ought to stick around.

In a game pumped up for national TV as the latest chapter of the rivalry between Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin, it was a 22-year-old rookie goaltender who stopped 32 of 34 shots and stole the spotlight in the Penguins' 4-2 win over the Capitals on Friday night at Capital One Arena and, in the process, probably made management's decisions these next few days that much more difficult.

Blomqvist's saves included 12 on the 13 high-danger shots he would see, as well as five overall saves on Ovechkin.

"He was huge for us today," Rickard Rakell raved of Blomqvist. "He played great for us, and really gave us a chance during the second period. We gave up a lot of great scoring chances, and he was making big saves."

"He's been unbelievable," Acciari told me. "He had some major saves, breakaway saves. He kept us in that game in the second period, where we probably didn't play our best. He came up with some big saves there in the third, too."

The Penguins, as a whole, were the better team in the first. They scored on two of their first three shots -- first an Erik Karlsson goal from the slot, then a Michael Bunting redirect of a Karlsson pass -- but beyond that they controlled much of the play. They outshot the Capitals, 11-10, and led, 5-3, in high-danger attempts, but the slight edges don't do enough to illustrate the quality of chances and the pace with which they started the game. The Capitals solved Blomqvist once in the first, with Rasmus Sandin beating him on a snap shot from the left circle.

The script flipped in the second period. The Capitals outshot the Penguins, 18-11, and had an astounding 12-4 lead in high-danger attempts. The only one to get by Blomqvist was an Andrew Mangiapane goal off a two-on-one rush. The Penguins were lucky to get to the second intermission tied 2-2, and Blomqvist is the one to thank for that.

He bailed them out with this save on Connor McMichael:

Or this one on Tom Wilson:

Or this one on Ovechkin:

The Penguins were a different team in the third, holding the Capitals to six shots while continuously pressing the attack, and Evgeni Malkin capitalized on one of the visitors' 10 shots to break the tie at 10:28 after a slick Bryan Rust setup:

It's Malk-IN the net! pic.twitter.com/4QDdtgsekt

— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) November 9, 2024

Acciari's late empty-netter sealed it.

Blomqvist was as even-keel as ever in the locker room. He held the NHL's greatest goal-scorer off the scoresheet and carried his team to a massive, meaningful win, and he seemed totally umoved.

"I felt pretty good," he said about his own game. "I mean, I felt our team played really good today. They had some big blocks for me. It was fun to play. It's nice that we played so good."

That nature isn't at all a language barrier issue -- his English is great, and his fellow Finns will tell you that he's on the quiet, reserved side in his native language. He just has a confidence about him, and it's been a strength of his dating back to his time in Finland, and the players on the ice seem to feel that.

"He's a quiet, calm guy," Acciari said. "That's good in a goalie. Nothing really fazes him, and I think he shows it in the net."

In his first seven NHL appearances, Blomqvist has a .913 save percentage and 3.25 goals-against average, both best on the team. Had Alex Nedeljkovic not been injured to start the year, Blomqvist likely wouldn't have gotten this opportunity this early. And when Tristan Jarry faltered in his first three games and sat before being given a two-week AHL conditioning stint, it offered Blomqvist an extended look. And as the games went on, he continued to show that he belongs.

Jarry's AHL stint ended on this same night. The stint went OK -- he won his first four games but struggled in Friday's finale in Allentown, Pa., and wound up his two weeks with a .926 save percentage and a 2.16 goals-against average. He'll be back in Pittsburgh, likely in time for practice Sunday.

Where the Penguins go from here is yet to be decided. They can carry three goaltenders -- they have been to this point, as Jarry still counted toward the cap throughout the AHL stint. And Kyle Dubas, speaking on this week's episode of the team's 'GM Show' before this game, didn't rule that out, saying, "We'll measure where we're at with our goaltenders here and make a decision to move ahead, whether it's with the three of them, or we make a decision regarding a transaction. There's multiple avenues you can go down with that. So we'll use all the time we have and see how everyone plays this week and and then have something on the weekend."

The wording of "regarding a transaction" is interesting. Dubas has previously ruled out Jarry and Nedeljkovic going on waivers and going to the AHL as an option, saying they'd only go down on conditioning stints, as each has already this season. Blomqvist can be re-assigned without waivers. But if sending Blomqvist down was the only "transaction" on the table, Dubas could have said that instead of being intentionally vague. 

Mike Sullivan said that the coming decisions are "always tough."

"These guys are all terrific people," Sullivan said. "They care a lot. They want to play. It'll be our job to try to put the guy in there that's going to give us the best chance to win. But we have faith in all these guys. They're all quality goaltenders."

To this point, Blomqvist has been the goaltender that gives them the best chance to win. The only reasons to not keep him would be that he probably hurts their chances of getting a good lottery pick in the draft, and if the defensive issues aren't solved you don't want the rookie goaltender getting shelled most nights. But if they really want to try to contend for a playoff spot, Blomqvist should have a spot on the roster.

Blomqvist feels confident that he's shown enough.

"I thought I played pretty good here," he said. "We'll see what happens over the next couple of days."