Oilers get: Goalie Tristan Jarry, forward Samuel Poulin
Penguins get: Goalie Stuart Skinner, defenseman Brett Kulak, second-round pick in 2029
Shayna Goldman: A team with Stanley Cup aspirations, such as the Oilers, needs a more stable goaltending situation. And Skinner’s game is basically the opposite of that. Sure, he has saved 7.69 goals above expected through 23 appearances, but how he got there shows the extremes on both sides of the spectrum. Some nights, he can steal a win and save three goals above expected. And other nights, he gets beaten by low-danger shots and the game spirals out of control. As exposed as the Oilers have left him defensively at times, he just can’t be counted on for timely saves consistently enough.
So, a change had to come, and the Oilers had to get creative because goalie trades are tricky to navigate. But the fact that management felt this was the solution is really something.
Jarry’s value may be up from last year (you know, when he could have been claimed for free off waivers), but at his core, he is still another volatile goalie. What’s especially concerning, again, for a team with Stanley Cup aspirations, is the fact that he doesn’t have a trusty record when it matters most. Problem No. 1 is that durability issues have held him out of postseasons past. No. 2 is that when he has been healthy enough to play, the results have been rough. Throughout his nine years of experience, Jarry has appeared in only eight playoff games (and allowed eight goals above expected in that time). That’s the starting goaltender the Oilers are tying to Connor McDavid’s two-year extension.
As much as his value has rebounded so far this regular season — with a 0.909 save percentage and GSAx of 9.09 — this move is incredibly risky. And the Oilers had to give up Kulak and a second-rounder to pull it off.
Kulak is basically a cap casualty here because the Penguins aren’t retaining any of Jarry’s $5.375 million cap hit (despite having three open retention spots). So, Skinner’s $2.6 million and Kulak’s $2.75 million had to go. Defenseman Spencer Stastney, acquired Friday in a separate deal with the Predators, brings an $825,000 price tag. Maybe the cap gymnastics wouldn’t have been necessary if management didn’t sign Trent Frederic, a fourth-liner, to an eight-year contract worth $3.85 million last summer. It’s the consequence of more questionable actions coming back to bite Stan Bowman and the Oilers’ front office.
From Pittsburgh’s side of things, this is a tidy bit of business. The Penguins add more depth that can either help contribute to a surprising playoff run or get flipped at the deadline if they fall out of it. A depth defender like Kulak with a team-friendly contract will generate interest ahead of the playoffs. And even if the team can’t move Skinner, his contract is up this summer (while Jarry has another two years). At worst, he can be a stopgap to rotate with Artūrs Šilovs while Joel Blomqvist and Sergei Murashov develop.
Penguins grade: B+Oilers grade: D
Dom Luszczyszyn: Finally, after years of speculation between the pipes, the Oilers got their guy. Apparently, their guy is Tristan Jarry, a goalie who cleared waivers less than a year ago. That the Oilers traded their current starter, Brett Kulak and a 2029 second-round pick to make it happen is genuinely baffling.
Goalies don’t often carry a lot of value on the trade market, and that’s for good reason. It’s a fickle position, and Jarry himself is a perfect example of that. The Penguins couldn’t give him away a season ago because he was playing so poorly and was so expensive. Now, he’s apparently the answer to Edmonton’s goaltending prayers after 14 games of bouncing back?
Goalies are notoriously up-and-down, making it difficult to peg what many can offer. Jarry falls firmly in that bucket, which is what makes it difficult to understand why the Oilers would pay this much for him. If they wouldn’t claim him for free last January, the 28 games since where Jarry has ranked 20th in GSAx per game shouldn’t have swayed them to add Skinner, Kulak and a second to the price tag.
The main issue at hand is Skinner’s inclusion in the deal. Jarry, on his own, would’ve been a fine target to pair with Skinner as an upgrade on Calvin Pickard. But this is just playing musical chairs with two equally hot-and-cold starters who are impossible to depend on long-term. Unless there’s another move on the docket to improve on Pickard, the Oilers will have the same problem with Jarry that they had with Skinner: the lack of a safety net behind a risky starter.
Jarry coming in for Skinner instead makes it difficult to see much of any tangible upgrade. Jarry is just as inconsistent, just as prone to bad stretches, and has a similar ability to save goals above expected as Skinner. Jarry has been better since returning to NHL action last March, but any longer outlook leans Skinner. Jarry is also older and more injury-prone, leaving further reliance on Pickard. By Net Rating, this trade literally doesn’t move the needle; Jarry looks just as poor as Skinner relative to other starters. The Oilers paid Kulak and a second for a lateral move.
It’s possible Jarry is the answer and thrives behind a stronger team. But it’s a risky bet that cost a lot more than it should’ve to make — and credit to Kyle Dubas for extracting that value out of a desperate team.
Along the way, the Oilers also replaced Kulak with Spencer Stastney from Nashville, which does seem like a modest upgrade to the third pair. But if the best Oilers headline here is “random analytical darling defenseman improves Oilers third pair” on a day when management believes it finally fixed its long-standing goaltending problems, that’s a bad sign — because it didn’t.
Oilers grade: C-Penguins grade: A
