Tristan Jarry has been around long enough to know this doesn’t look good.
He has been an NHL All-Star twice, has started more than 50 games a season, and has had a save percentage above .900 in seven NHL seasons. He has also lost the starting job in Pittsburgh, cleared waivers, and spent time in the American Hockey League. At 31, there isn’t much point projecting what Jarry could eventually become. After all, the Edmonton Oilers acquired him based on what he is now.
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Edmonton needs Jarry to provide competent NHL goaltending over a full season. Somewhere around 45 starts and a save percentage in the .905 to .910 range would give the Oilers what they need, particularly if those numbers come without the extended stretches of bad games that became a problem late in his Pittsburgh tenure.
Jarry gave Edmonton a decent sample after arriving last season. He had a .909 save percentage in 14 regular-season games and followed it with a .908 SV% over six playoff games. Had it not been such a small sample size, it would look quite promising.
League-wide goaltending numbers have also changed enough that a .910 save percentage carries more value than it did several years ago. The days when teams could reasonably expect an average starting goaltender to finish above that are gone. A goalie hanging around league average while starting in 45 to 50 games has value on a roster that’s built to get most of its advantages elsewhere.
Jarry had his best season in 2021-22 with a .919 save percentage over 58 games. He followed it with a .909 save percentage in 2022-23 and .903 the following year. His 2024-25 was so bad that Pittsburgh placed him on waivers in January and sent him to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.
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His career .907 save percentage over his time in Pittsburgh is respectable, and there were times when he played well above that level. But Pittsburgh could not count on him long-term.
Asking for Jarry to match his .919 SV% in 2021-22 would be unreasonable and set the standard unnecessarily high. A season around .908 with a steady workload would leave the Oilers with goaltending that’s good enough for the roster in front of him.
But it all depends on what Mike Babcock wants. Draisaitl acknowledged this summer that Edmonton never really developed any consistency over the course of last season, saying better teams establish a pattern over 82 games and understand what it is that they do right and wrong. He didn’t think the Oilers ever reached that point.
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Now, that wasn’t limited to goaltending. Edmonton had nights when its defence was bad, when they took bad penalties, or sometimes just couldn’t score enough goals. Babcock has been brought in with an emphasis on structure and accountability, and an improved defensive game should make Jarry’s job easier.
A .908 save percentage doesn’t mean much if it includes several stretches where he can’t get through a game without allowing a poor goal. Forty-five dependable starts would be more useful than alternating between excellent and poor for six months.
Jarry has started in 50 games only twice in his NHL career and has started in fewer games since 2023-24. Edmonton has little reason to push him further than that with the other goaltenders that they have.
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Jarry’s playoff history in Pittsburgh includes some difficult moments, and Edmonton is at the stage where every player on the roster is eventually judged on what happens in April and May. So while a solid regular season matters, he still has to be reliable when things get turned up a notch.
For now, the standard is simply consistency. Stay around league average or a little better for multiple games in a row. Take the starts and do something with them. Avoid the prolonged slumps that eventually cost him the net in Pittsburgh.
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