Time for a history lesson
Tristan Jarry’s failures in the playoffs last spring were epic. Yet the Penguins stood by him during a hard offseason, perhaps because the past has a way of reminding us that from humbling losses can grow great careers.
Jonathan Quick made the long, lonesome skate to the bench, as Game 5 against the Vancouver Canucks unraveled and his first NHL postseason series came undone. ❡ It was 2010. A 24-year-old Quick debuted in the postseason with three strong showings, posting a .918 save percentage to help the Los Angeles Kings build a 2-1 series lead. ❡ But then? A five-goal meltdown in Game 4 evened the series. Things snowballed. Quick followed in Game 5 by coughing up five more goals ... by the second period. Coach Terry Murray yanked his young netminder. ❡ Something odd happened next. Two more Vancouver goals later, Quick skated back in net to finish the rout. ❡ “That was a unique game,” Quick said this week. “I think that’s the only time in my career that happened.” ❡ Questions emerged and the goalie’s confidence was tested after he dropped Game 6 to squander the series. But just two years later, Quick earned his postseason redemption. And Ron Hextall learned a lesson. ❡ Just because a goalie flounders in his first postseason, it’s not necessarily time to write him off. ❡ Hextall, then an assistant general manager with the Kings, was part of the front office that chose to stick with Quick. That decision paid off when the 26-year-old netminder put together one of the best statistical postseasons in NHL history just two years later. Quick dominated with a .946 save percentage and 1.41 goals-against average on the way to capturing the 2012 Stanley Cup and the Conn Smythe as the postseason MVP. ❡ Now, about a decade later, Hextall is making a somewhat similar bet as general manager of the Penguins.
Tristan Jarry’s first postseason series mirrored Quick’s, with shaky moments and subpar stats. His 3.5 goals-against average was identical to Quick and his .888 save percentage was actually better than Quick’s .884. As speculation and scrutiny swirled around the crease, the biggest offseason question was: How would the Penguins upgrade their goaltending?
Turns out, just as the Kings turned back to Quick to close out Game 5, the Penguins will once again put Jarry back in net when the season begins in Tampa, Fla.
“Those lessons as a goaltender are very valuable,” said Hextall, a former goalie. “Some of them you have to go through to actually understand them. Every lesson you go through, whether it’s good or bad, it can harden you and give you the type of experience you need to become a better athlete.”
As the Penguins look ahead to the 2021-22 season, let’s look back at the goalies who endured similar earlycareer postseason letdowns and what lessons can be learned.
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Hextall has repeatedly pointed out that plenty of goalies have weathered uneven postseason debuts or been humbled by major gaffes only to go on to win a Cup (or five) and earn enshrinement in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Tom Barrasso posted an .864 save percentage and 3.46 goals-against average in his first postseason. He went on to win the Cup in back-toback seasons with the Penguins.
Henrik Lundqvist started his postseason journey by allowing six goals in his first game and 13 in his first three (all losses) before getting benched in Game 4. He became one of the top-15 winningest postseason goalies of all-time. In his first postseason series, both of Marc-Andre Fleury’s stats (.880 save percentage, 3.77 goals-against average) were worse than Jarry. Two years later, he hoisted the Cup for the first of three times.
In total, of the NHL’s 15 winningest postseason goalies, nine recorded a sub-.900 save percentage in their first series. Six had a worse save percentage than Jarry and seven had a worse goals-against average.
“The thing with postseason hockey, if you get knocked out in the first round, your playoffs are judged off of five, six, seven games tops,” said Quick, a two-time Cup-winner. “It’s obviously a small sample size. You have one or two bad games in the mix, in the offseason those are the only two games they’re going to look at.”
Even the NHL’s most-accomplished postseason goalies, Patrick Roy (151 postseason wins) and Martin Brodeur (113), had to weather rough moments. Just Google “Patrick Roy Statue of Liberty” or “Martin Brodeur 2003 Stanley Cup Game 3.”
Grant Fuhr ranks third on the NHL’s all-time postseason win list. He, too, can relate to what it’s like to have a postseason debut that’s, well … not so great.
“Awful would be a better way of
describing it,” said Fuhr, who became the first Black player inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2003.
Fuhr burst onto the scene with Edmonton in 1981-82, finishing second in Vezina Trophy voting. But in his first postseason game against the Kings, the then-19-year-old netminder allowed nine goals in a 10-8 loss. He recovered in Game 2 to earn the win. But in Game 3, the Oilers led 5-0 in the third period before Fuhr blew it by allowing six third-period goals.
“I was confident going in,” Fuhr said. “By the time it was over, the confidence had completely left. It probably took me a good two or three months into the next year before the confidence even started to come back.”
Fuhr gave up seven more goals in the series-clinching game and finished his first postseason with an .853 save percentage and 5.05 goalsagainst average. All the positive momentum he built during his first season had evaporated.
“You start to doubt yourself, and that’s the worst thing you can do,” Fuhr said. “The more you worried about it, the harder you pressed. The harder you tried, the worse it got.”
As the poor postseason leaked into Fuhr’s second regular season, fans and the media began turning on him, questioning if he had what it took to be a No. 1.
“Oh, that happens through your whole career,” Fuhr said, with a laugh. “That’s the fun of being a goalie. Either you’re good or you’re the goat. Either way, you make a difference.” That early-career dud could have been the beginning of a downward spiral. Instead, it turned into a launching pad. Fuhr’s name now appears on the Cup five times as a part of the Edmonton Oilers 1980s dynasty.
“It made me mentally tougher,” Fuhr said. “You know going into the next year, everybody doubts what you’re doing. So you have to believe in yourself. It forces you to take a look inside yourself and push yourself a little bit.
“Even if you’re struggling with your confidence a little bit, you can’t let anybody else know. You have to carry yourself like you believe in yourself. Body language is a great tell as to how somebody is thinking and feeling.” Now, just because Jarry endured a poor start to his postseason career doesn’t mean he’s automatically the next Jonathan Quick or Grant Fuhr or Henrik Lundqvist or Marc-Andre Fleury.
What Hextall is saying is that history tells us that because a goalie flounders in his initial postseason, it’s not necessarily the end.
“Careers last a long time,” Fuhr said. “You’re going to have some ups and downs. That’s the way it is. It’s what you do once you have those downs.”
In the wake of the postseason disappointment, the one change the Penguins made in net was to their coaching staff, promoting Andy Chiodo to goaltending coach. As a former Penguins draft pick who is fascinated by the mental side of the game and has digested many psychology books, Chiodo will bring a new voice in Jarry’s corner.
The Penguins netminder also was flooded with support from around the goaltending community. Goalies, past and present, got in touch during the offseason to share unsolicited words of encouragement.
“There were guys who played 15-plus years who reached out,” Jarry said, while choosing to keep the specific players’ names to himself. “We’re all sort of our own little union. We all boost each other up and pick each other up. There’s nothing more we want to see than everybody play well.”
Meanwhile, Jarry spent the offseason as he typically does, working out with several goaltenders in Edmonton. He took the time away from game action as an opportunity to “take a step forward.”
“I wanted to be better this year,” Jarry said simply, recognizing he needs to be better when it matters.
Asked what Jarry needs to do to make that happen, Quick said it’s as simple as doing the same things that got him the opportunity to lead the Penguins onto the ice in the first place.
“For him, to get to the position where he is as a starting goalie in the league, he would already know what it takes,” Quick said. “It’s nothing different. You go and you play your game.”
Fuhr, who worked as a goalie coach in the Coyotes organization after his playing days, said the biggest issue after a bad series is that a goalie can start to think too much instead of just reading and reacting. He used to tell goalies they were allowed to rehash a bad goal until they went to sleep. But when they woke up, it was time to start with a clean slate.
His approach would be to show Jarry video and clips of when he was atop his game to “build up the positive feelings in his mind,” like during the 2019-20 season when Jarry set a new Penguins shutout streak on the way to an All-Star Game nod.
“Talent doesn’t disappear,” Fuhr said. “That’s the one thing people don’t understand. All that talent is still there. A lot of it is confidence. It’s just a matter of him finding a way to believe in himself.”