Madden Monday: On Tristan Jarry's new contract

On Saturday, the Pittsburgh Penguins decided to retain goalie Tristan Jarry in free agency, signing him to a five-year contract that carries a salary cap hit of $5.375 million. New Penguins president of hockey operations Kyle Dubas called keeping Tristan Jarry “the best bet to make for our club” in goal.

Really? Because so far, betting on Jarry to help the Penguins find postseason success has been a good way to lose money.

During his time as the Penguins’ No. 1 goaltender, in terms of playoffs, Jarry has either been bad in them (2021 against the New York Islanders), been largely absent from them due to injury (2022 against the New York Rangers) or has failed to qualify for them (2023).

Which is why, of all the moves Dubas has made so far, Mark Madden of TribLIVE and 105.9 The X is most dubious of the Jarry signing.

“I’m not militantly against it, but I just think it’s too long,” Madden said during this week’s “Madden Monday” podcast. “Here’s a guy that has failed them via being hurt too much and has failed them playing poorly in big games. They gave him a five-year deal. Now maybe that was just the going rate. Maybe Jarry was going to get that somewhere. The average annual value is not too much; the term is too much. I would not have given him more than they did. To be honest, I would hesitate to give him more than two years, and he got five.”

Madden says his biggest concern for the Penguins is wedding themselves to a goalie that has been so frequently injured.

“It’s gambling on Jarry to stay healthy. He has to stay healthy,” Madden insisted. “He’s been hurt fairly often and recently too. So to gamble on that is definitely a risk.”

However, Madden is not willing to cast judgment against Dubas just yet.

“Kyle Dubas is the guy I’ve been campaigning to get this job since March when I started to smell out that he might get sacked by the Maple Leafs,” Madden said. “So I want to trust the guy’s plan. I think everything else he did was spot on. If you can get Erik Karlsson from San Jose, that’d be the cherry on top. I just never even dreamed the Penguins would be in the mix for that. I still don’t see how they make it work. But the fact that it’s even a possibility is a testament to what Dubas can do — his dealmaking ability.”

Such a move would probably require moving the salaries of Mikael Granlund and Jeff Petry or a team buyout of them. That’s a tactic Dubas has said he’d prefer to avoid.

Madden and I discussed those options during the podcast. We also get into the signings of the bottom six forwards Dubas picked up, the plan for defenseman Ryan Graves, the swapping out of Jason Zucker for Reilly Smith and the addition of backup goalie Alex Nedeljkovic.

Plus, we analyze the decision Ben Cherington has to make atop the draft board for the Pirates, and we get into the future of Twitter.

Tim Benz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tim at [email protected] or via . All tweets could be reposted. All emails are subject to publication unless specified otherwise.