Goalies are important!
Last week we started a late off-season exercise (hey, it’s the last official full week before camp officially starts for veterans on the 22nd) about the most important players on the Penguins.
With Sidney Crosby executive decision’ed into the top spot, the voting was open for second place. There was a runaway winner of the poll too, with the winner taking 70% of the voting. And it’s probably no surprise that the winner was goalie Tristan Jarry. As so painfully illustrated in the last two playoffs — in 2021 when Jarry was ineffective and 2022 when he was hurt — not having a starting goalie in peak form is often a ticket straight out of the postseason.
With Crosby and Jarry now off the board as the most important players, this round of voting should open up quite a bit and be interesting. Perhaps surprisingly enough, Evgeni Malkin finished second in the poll but will all the Jarry voters from last round flip more towards Kris Letang? Or even Jake Guentzel?
For his work at even strength and on the penalty kill, we’ll add Brian Dumoulin to the poll as an available option to vote on.
