Can The Edmonton Oilers’ Fortunes In Goal Improve With Tristan Jarry?

A new era has begun for the Edmonton Oilers. On Friday morning, the team announced that GM Stan Bowman had acquired goaltender Tristan Jarry and right wing Sam Poulin from the Pittsburgh Penguins in exchange for goaltender Stuart Skinner, defenseman Brett Kulak and a second-round pick in the 2029 draft.

In a secondary deal, the Oilers also acquired defenseman Spencer Stastney from the Nashville Predators in exchange for a third-round pick in 2027.

With Stanley Cup expectations following losses in the Final in both 2023 and 2024, Jarry offers the potential for a more stable crease after Skinner’s mercurial run with his hometown team.

In six seasons in Edmonton, Skinner amassed a regular-season record of 109-62-18 with a .904 save percentage and 2.74 goals-against average. Selected by the Oilers in the third round of the 2017 draft, two years after Connor McDavid’s arrival, Skinner has been the team’s starter through its most successful run since the great teams of the 1980s. But he was shaky enough in his playoff appearances to cause the team to turn to backup Calvin Pickard at times in both the 2023 and 2024 post-seasons, and couldn’t deliver a championship when the stakes were at their highest.

This season, the noise intensified as the Oilers struggled out of the gate. Skinner leaves with a save perentage of .891 and goals-against of 2.83 this season — both career lows for him. But after going 2-0-1 in his last three games, he departs with a record of 11-8-4 as the Oilers sit in the first wild-card spot in the Western Conference with an overall record of 14-11-6.

Jarry, 30, is returning to a city where he had success before joining the NHL. Drafted 44th overall by the Penguins in 2013, the native of Surrey, B.C. played his junior hockey with the WHL’s Edmonton Oil Kings. In 2013-14, Jarry backstopped the Oil Kings to a WHL championship and the Memorial Cup.

The move will be an easy adjustment, as Jarry lives and trains in Edmonton during the off-season. His contract term also aligns with the Oilers’ current Stanley Cup window. His current five-year deal with a cap hit of $5.375 million expires at the end of the 2027-28 season — the same time as Connor McDavid’s new two-year contract extension.

The downside is that the Oilers needed to include Kulak in the deal in order to make the money work. They’re tight to the salary-cap ceiling and Skinner’s cap hit is just $2.6 million. Kulak is a reliable defensive defenseman and an Edmonton native, but taking his $2.75 million cap hit off the books offers just enough room to bring in Jarry.

Both Skinner and Kulak are on expiring contracts and can become unrestricted free agents at the end of this season.

With their current roster situation, including defenseman Jake Walman being placed on long-term injured reserve on Thursday, PuckPedia currently shows the Oilers with $934,167 in available cap space after the trades and Friday’s other roster moves were executed.

Jarry’s career numbers with the Penguins are good. In 10 seasons, he’s 161-100-32, with a .909 save percentage and 2.74 goals-against average. This year, he has been right at .909 and dropped his GAA to 2.66 while putting up a record of 9-3-1. And while most pre-season projections expected the Penguins to sit near the bottom of the standings, they’re also in the playoff mix at 14-8-7, currently sitting in the second wild-card spot in the ultra-tight Eastern Conference.

As frustrated as Oilers fans have been with Skinner’s inconsistency, Jarry’s playoff resume doesn’t deliver much immediate comfort. He was in the minors when the Penguins won their Stanley Cups in 2016 and 2017, has played just eight post-season games over three seasons in his career and has been plagued by injuries, especially at the most important time of year.

That hasn’t been an issue for the last three seasons, since the Penguins failed to qualify for the playoffs. Jarry’s injury history has been better in recent years but last season, a rough start in his first three games led to an early benching, then a five-game conditioning stint with the AHL’s Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins in the fall of 2024. In January of 2025, he cleared waivers and suited up for seven more AHL games.

After closing out a successful five-game homestand with a record of 3-1-1, the Oilers now hit the road for five games, including high-profile stops in Toronto and Montreal and a visit to Pittsburgh next Tuesday, Dec. 16.

The Penguins are 0-1-2 in their last three games, and Jarry took the loss on Thursday in Pittsburgh’s 4-2 defeat at the hands of the Montreal Canadiens. They’ll host the Utah Mammoth and San Jose Sharks in weekend matinee games before closing out their homestand against the Oilers.

Every meeting between the Edmonton Oilers’ Connor McDavid and the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Sidney Crosby is must-see TV. With the high stakes of both teams’ playoff chases and the added intrigue of this goalie swap, there are plenty of storylines on deck for the national broadcast on the NHL on TNT.