Penguins stumble through loss to Capitals

Tristan Jarry has a fairly binary way of assessing his job.

And considering his vocation, he largely operates in a pass-fail realm.

“You want to win every game, and you want to stop every puck,” the Pittsburgh Penguins goaltender said on Monday when asked how he evaluates his performance. “When I’m in the net, I want to be a difference. I want to help the team as much as possible. Everyone is tough on themselves in that sense.”

During Tuesday’s 3-1 home loss to the Washington Capitals at PPG Paints Arena, Jarry’s teammates did quite a bit to make things tough on him.

Jarry was bombarded with 42 shots, stopping 39, and faced the full wrath of one of the NHL’s most dynamic offenses for most of the contest. That issue was amplified by the Penguins taking enough penalties to grant the Capitals five power-play chances, though the visitors failed to score with a man advantage.

In contrast, the Penguins could generate only 27 shots and were 0 for 4 on their power-play opportunities — including a brief five-on-three sequence — thanks in part to a handful of shots that hit iron early in the contest.

The second period in particular is what appeared to doom the Penguins.

During the middle frame, they took four penalties — forwards Jake Guentzel and Evgeni Malkin as well as defensemen P.O Joseph and Mike Matheson were the guilty parties — and were outshot 18-5.

“It felt like the whole second period, we were short-handed,” forward Teddy Blueger said. “We’d kill one off then a couple of shifts later, get another one. So it was just tough to generate momentum. They kept playing offense shift after shift after shift on the power play. So it was tough for us to generate any offense for us or sustain pressure that period.

“That’s kind of when they really took the game over and had a really good spell. We just never really recovered from it.”

The Capitals struck first 4 minutes, 52 seconds into the second period when ex-Penguins forward Conor Sheary ripped a wrister from the right circle past Jarry’s shoulder on the near side for his third goal of the season.

It became a 2-0 game at 11:31 of the second thanks to forward Jakub Vrana sizzling a wrister from the right circle past Jarry’s glove hand, again on the near side, for his fifth goal.

The lopsided nature of the attack in Washington’s favor was evident in how the Penguins deployed their personnel during the second.

Penalty killers clocked in with bloated short-handed time-on-ice totals during the second, including Blueger (5:13), defenseman Cody Ceci (4:33), forward Brandon Tanev (4:26), defenseman John Marino (4:15) and defenseman Marcus Pettersson (3:05).

Meanwhile, franchise centers Sidney Crosby (4:45) and Malkin (4:41) saw relatively little in the way of overall ice time in the second.

“Not everybody kills (penalties),” Pettersson said. “A lot of guys get out of the game a little bit when you’ve got to defend a lot.”

The Penguins didn’t offer much defense on Washington’s third goal 1:09 into the third period. A passing sequence between Capitals forwards Richard Panik and Lars Eller diced up the Penguins’ zone and resulted in Eller’s second goal.

Washington’s shutout bid was broken up at 15:05 of the third period when forward Zach Aston-Reese took a pass from Blueger and fired a wrister past goaltender Vitek Vanek for his third goal.

By that point, the damage suffered in the second period was too much to overcome.

“We self-inflicted there,” coach Mike Sullivan said. “It’s tough. We took four penalties. Eight of the 20 minutes were in the penalty box. So almost half of the period, we’re killing penalties. It just takes guys out of the game. It takes guys out of the flow.

“We certainly didn’t help ourselves with the amount of penalties that we took.”