Mark Madden: Having 2 starting goalies not a bad situation for Penguins

Tristan Jarry leads the NHL in all three significant goaltending categories.

Matt Murray’s stats are his career worst in goals-against average and save percentage.

Yet the story of the Penguins’ goaltending situation is far from written.

Murray is playing better. He has won three of his last four starts. He posted save percentages of .929 and .917 in the last two.

Does Murray still leak in the occasional bad goal? Yes. Is he still sitting too deep in the crease? Yes. Is he still making himself small? Yes.

But all that is getting better, however incrementally. He also is making big saves.

But Jarry has become incredibly reliable in his first stint as a true starting goaltender. He makes netminding look easy (though his blocker stop on Florida’s Aaron Ekblad this past Sunday will be among the saves of the year). His puckhandling is simple, yet skilled and effective. He already is among the league’s elite in that department.

Jarry’s workload can’t be lightened. He’s too effective.

But Murray has to be kept active and coaxed toward his previous heights.

That’s because the Penguins don’t know how Jarry will respond to the cauldron of the playoffs. Can he be trusted to deliver in that environment? There’s no way of knowing. Jarry has never played in a postseason game.

Murray has. His career playoff stats are better than his career regular-season numbers. He has won two Stanley Cup championships. Murray pitched back-to-back shutouts to finish off Nashville in the 2017 final. He allowed one goal in Game 6 of the ’16 final as the Penguins beat San Jose to clinch the championship.

Those accomplishments get further away all the time. But they can’t be dismissed.

There will be nervous anticipation when Jarry starts his first playoff game. But Murray’s inexperience was ignored when he backstopped the Penguins to the Stanley Cup in ’16, his first playoff action. (It had to be. Marc-Andre Fleury was out at the beginning of the postseason with post-concussion syndrome. He started just one game in those playoffs.)

The playoffs are a different, pressure-packed atmosphere. But the puck and nets are the same size. It’s difficult to picture Jarry flinching.

The story hardly stops after the season.

Jarry and Murray are due new contracts. Each is a restricted free agent, which means neither is going anywhere of his own accord.

But raises are certainly due, and Murray reportedly wants big term and big money: eight years and in the neighborhood of $8 million per. That and Jarry’s relative affordability could pave Murray’s road out of Pittsburgh.

There’s the 2021 expansion draft to consider. Could the Penguins lose a starting-caliber goalie for the second straight expansion? Who would stay and who would go?

Murray could be gone before then. GM Jim Rutherford hasn’t actively shopped Murray. (Jarry was definitely on the block this past offseason.) But Rutherford isn’t hanging up the phone when Murray’s name comes up. Discussion has occurred.

But it’s hard to imagine Rutherford trading Murray now unless a legit backup comes the other way as part of the deal.

Jarry is the starter right now. That won’t change unless he soils the bed. If we’re not through waiting for that to happen, we should be close. Murray can close the gap by catching fire, but that’s hard to do playing sporadically.

Injury can intervene, as it did in ’16, and again when Fleury had his big playoff run in ’17, and like it has constantly for the Penguins this season.

But if the status quo is maintained, the Penguins find themselves where they were in ’16 and ’17: With two very good goalies. Not a bad situation.