Kingerski: It’s Time to Change Penguins Goalies, It’s Time for Blomqvist

Tristan Jarry is a talented goaltender who was mentioned as a candidate for Team Canada in the 2026 Winter Olympics as recently as last year. Alex Nedeljkovic is a scrappy battler on a two-year contract who has revived his career. Yet neither has compiled enough good games this season to stabilize the goaltending position for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Both Penguins goalies have teetered around an .890 save percentage for the bulk of the campaign, which is well below average. After another rough weekend, Jarry is at .888, and Nedeljkovic is at .886. While the greater failure rests upon Jarry, who is supposed to be the No. 1 goalie and carries a $5.375 million salary cap hit for three seasons after this, the unavoidable truth is that the team hasn’t gotten consistent goaltending from the tandem.

The Penguins rank 30th in save percentage. Only the goalie-starved Columbus Blue Jackets (.884) and Philadelphia Flyers (.879) are lower.

Feelings and egos be damned, it’s just about time to call up Joel Blomqvist from the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins and begin his NHL career in earnest.

The first question is who should pair with Blomqvist.

Nedeljkovic has somewhat outplayed Jarry recently, though not significantly, and has generally avoided soft goals but was literally on the bottom of the pile Saturday against the Ottawa Senators, who scored five goals (As noted in the Penguins report card, we’re still dubious about two or three of them, but the NHL counted five). 

When the Penguins have good goaltending, they’ve beaten very good teams, such as the Edmonton Oilers on Thursday. Nedeljkovic made 40 saves that night, including some acrobatic stops, and the team responded.

The team also seems to like playing for Nedeljkovic.

“On and off the ice the ice, everybody loves him. He’s a competitor,” said the equally scrappy Blake Lizotte. “He makes the saves he’s supposed to, and every once in a while makes those saves–he’s athletic. He’s a grinder and never quits on a play … We love him, and the confidence (in him) is fully there.”

That echoes coach Mike Sullivan’s comments near the end of last season when he tapped Nedeljkovic for the final 13 starts of the season during a furious playoff push.

The players are fighting for the 2024-25 season, and while general manager Kyle Dubas isn’t shopping for short-term roster help, a change to the goaltending structure seems increasingly necessary. The Penguins’ season has been stuck in a sideways trajectory in which success is proceeded by failure, and those failures are mitigated by just enough success to embrace optimism before inviting more failure.

It’s a vicious cycle leading to an 18-19-8 record.

Since the return to play following the holiday break, Jarry had been soft, and winnable contests became extra-time losses. For a team embroiled in a playoff battle with no less than a half-dozen teams, every point counts, and the Penguins kindly gift-wrapped a few and gave them away.

They lost 5-2 Sunday to the Tampa Bay Lightning, who registered just 18 shots. Jarry gave up three goals on 16 shots, one of which he should have stopped and another he could have stopped.

It’s a trend.

By no means should the entirety of the Penguins’ mediocre record or their consistent trading of wins and losses to a sub-.500 record be placed solely upon the goalies. In fact, goaltending is merely one of a handful of issues plaguing the team.

Sometimes, the netminding is fantastic, and sometimes, it’s a cause for great concern.

Since the Penguins’ future is front and center in nearly all personnel moves, it’s entirely in keeping with general manager Kyle Dubas’s plan to call up Blomqvist as soon as possible. This season, the Penguins goalie prospect has taken a tiny statistical step backward with a .912 save percentage (compared to .921 last season. However, we should note that injuries have battered the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins defense, and they weren’t the most defensive-minded group anyway.

Blomqvist acquitted himself well when he got his first NHL shot earlier this season as Jarry was relegated to the AHL on a conditioning assignment to regain form.

Blomqvist had a shaky game or two during his NHL stint and was 3-5-0 in the NHL with a .904 save percentage behind a team that was also shaky. That save percentage now stands 16 points better than either current Penguins goalie.

The biggest question seems to be not when Blomqvist should be recalled but how to make space for him when they do: a Penguins trade or send one of the goalies through waivers to WBS?

Do they dare destroy Jarry’s trade value and perhaps confidence by giving him a ticket to WBS or simply shoving him in the press box as they carry three goalies?

A side note to the process is that the organization also has Sergei Murashov stashed in Wheeling of the ECHL. The rapidly rising prospect recently lost his first start in a couple of months. Dominant would be a proper adjective to describe his play, which should earn him a promotion to the AHL, but it has not yet been forthcoming because the Penguins depth chart is logjammed.

It would seem now is the time to loosen the logjam.