Tristan Jarry chased, John Marino hurt in Penguins loss to Rangers

Pittsburgh Penguins coach Mike Sullivan views the regular use of two goaltenders more as a necessity than as a luxury.

And given the compacted nature of the 2020-21 schedule because of the pandemic, the Penguins have needed to deploy starter Tristan Jarry and backup Casey DeSmith quite a bit.

“These guys have been a real important part of this team’s success to this point,” Sullivan said via video conference. “We’ll continue to lean on both of them moving forward by nature of the condensed schedule.”

Sullivan probably didn’t anticipate using both of them Tuesday, but that was the case during a lopsided 8-4 road loss to the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden.

Jarry, who returned to the lineup after missing two games because of an undisclosed injury, was torched behind a porous defense for four goals on 11 shots and was pulled after a single period in favor of DeSmith, who made nine saves on 14 shots over the final two periods and was charged with the loss, dropping his record to 9-5-0.

Amplifying the Penguins’ strife was the premature departure of defenseman John Marino, who left the game midway through the third period due to an undisclosed injury he suffered after being tripped and falling on his face.

Combined with Saturday’s 7-5 road loss to the Boston Bruins, the Penguins have allowed an obscene 15 goals in their past two games.

In contrast, they allowed 15 goals in the nine contests that preceded this wretched two-game sequence.

The team’s overall defense – not just the defensemen, but the forwards and goaltenders – has been nothing short of pernicious in the past handful of days.

“It just looks like we’re kind of lost,” forward Jared McCann said. “We’re giving up chances that we’re not normally used to giving up. We’re letting our goalies down right now and giving teams backdoor tap-ins and shots from high-grade areas. We need to tighten up.”

The pace of this game was established early — 1 minute, 36 seconds into regulation when Rangers forward Colin Blackwell recorded his 10th goal of the season after a pass attempt was inadvertently deflected into the Penguins’ cage by Penguins defenseman Mike Matheson.

Goals by Rangers forwards Mika Zibanejad, his 13th at 7:28 of the first, and Artemi Panarin, his 12th on a power-play chance at the 9:58 mark, made it a 3-0 game and prompted Sullivan to call a timeout to get his team organized.

That tactic paid immediate dividends as McCann converted on a power-play chance for his 10th goal at the 10:38 mark of the first.

Any momentum the Penguins generated was nullified at 19:42 of the first with another power-play goal by Rangers forward Ryan Strome, who collected his 12th.

The Rangers made it a 5-1 score at 12:20 of the second period when rookie forward Alexis Lafreniere was credited with his sixth goal when Marino accidentally played a puck into his own cage.

A goal by Matheson only 16 seconds later made it a 5-2 contest.

The teams exchanged goals at a furious pace in the third period. First, Rangers forward Kaapo Kakko collected his sixth goal at the 6:10 mark off a redirection, after the puck glanced off of Penguins defenseman Kris Letang.

The Penguins persisted and pulled within a field goal at 8:04 of the third when forward Jake Guentzel cranked a one-timer from the left circle for his team-leading 17th goal.

The floodgates opened later in the period with Rangers defenseman Adam Fox getting a short-handed goal — his fifth, at the 10:22 mark — and forward Pavel Buchnevich getting an even-strength score — his 15th, at the 10:41 mark.

Penguins defenseman Brian Dumoulin capped the scoring at 18:36 of the third with his first goal.

The Penguins don’t seem to be panicking over the prospect of having yielded so much offense to the opposition over the past two games.

At the same time, they realize they are in dire need of an immediate course correction.

“We need to stop here and take a look at where we’re at,” defenseman Marcus Pettersson said. “We’ve been playing some good hockey, and we can’t let it slip away from us right now. … We need to look at what we need to do better and go from there.”