Oilers rumours: Potential trade for Tristan Jarry wouldn\u2019t include Skinner, Penguins \u2018absolutely unwilling\u2019 to retain salary<\/p>\n
The Edmonton Oilers\u2019<\/a> search for a goaltender nearly landed them Tristan Jarry netminder.<\/p>\n In fact,\u00a0Sportsnet\u2019s Elliotte Friedman reported on Monday\u2019s edition of the\u00a032 Thoughts podcast that the Oilers have been looking to pair Jarry with Skinner as the team\u2019s one-two punch.<\/p>\n \u201cThe one thing that is absolutely true is that Edmonton showed a lot of interest in Jarry \u2014 that\u2019s real,\u201d said Friedman, with he and his co-host Kyle Bukauskas talking about a long hug between Skinner and Pickard after last Thursday\u2019s game. \u201cWhat was fact is that the Oilers liked the idea. What is also fact, and it really explained a lot of the Pickard stuff to me, Kyle, that you and I talked about\u2026 I think he knew that if they had gotten Jarry, he was out.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve since found out it wasn\u2019t going to be Jarry for Skinner<\/a>. It was going to be Jarry and Skinner, which, you know, one of the things we\u2019ve talked about a lot is that the Oilers weren\u2019t going to make a change in goal unless they really believe they could have improvement. And I think you would make an argument that a Skinner Jarry combination, assuming they could both stay healthy, it was an improvement, and they were hoping that that\u2019s what they could do and the two of them would push each other and force each other to become better. That was their goal.\u201dThe Oilers have loosely been linked to Jarry in recent years, but a Nov. 26 report<\/a> from ESPN\u2019s\u00a0Kevin Weeks highlighted the netminder was \u201cdrawing significant interest\u201d as an option for Edmonton in the trade market.<\/p>\n Now, what\u2019s hung up the deal, Friedman reported, is Pittsburgh\u2019s staunch unwillingness to retain salary.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, what happened, that has ended things for now, is that I\u2019m told Pittsburgh is absolutely unwilling to retain (salary),\u201d he said. \u201cJarry has two more years at just under $5.4-million and they, the Penguins have made it very clear that if they were going to do this, there was going to be no retention.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd if you\u2019re an Oiler fan, you know that that\u2019s going to be very hard for them to do.\u201d<\/p>\n The 30-year-old Jarry has seen a resurgence between the pipes this season, posting a 9-2-1 record, a .913 save percentage and a 2.67 goals against average after a brutal 2024-25 campaign saw him land on waivers and playing in the AHL.<\/p>\n He would post a 6-5-1 record, .908 save percentage and a 2.67 goals against average in a dozen AHL games last year, which came in October, January and February, while posting a 16-12-6 record, .893 save percentage and a 3.12 goals against average in 36 NHL games.<\/p>\n Jarry, however, has been one of the best goalies in the league prior to last season. Among 63 goalies who played 82 or more games between the 2019-20 and 2023-24 season, he won the seventh most games, had the 13th best save percentage (.912), the 18th best goals against average (2.68) while acheiving a quality start in 60.9 percent of his starts, the ninth-best rate.<\/p>\n As Friedman mentioned, the Oilers cap situation makes taking on Jarry\u2019s full contract \u2014 two years left at a $5.375-million cap hit \u2014 nearly untenable. In a hypothetical situation, the Oilers could nearly swap salaries by removing Pickard ($1-million cap hit), Mattias Janmark ($1.5-million) and Brett Kulak ($2.8-million) from the roster, but once injured players like Kasperi Kapanen and Noah Philp are ready to come off the Long-Term Injured Reserve, the Oilers wouldn\u2019t be able to carry any extra bodies on their roster. They would also have to to send Connor Clattenburg and David Tom\u00e1\u0161ek to the AHL\u2019s Condors and placing Curtis Lazar on waivers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Oilers are cap tight and right now they\u2019ve got a lot of injuries and guys just in and out and they\u2019re barely carrying extra players,\u201d said Friedman. \u201cTheir roster is stuck. So they really couldn\u2019t do a lot of stuff even if they wanted to without dollar in, dollar out.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m told that that has made that trade almost impossible to do unless the Oilers do surgery of their own \u2014 and I\u2019m not convinced they want to do that.<\/p>\n \u201cSo basically where we are is yes, they do like Jarry. Yes, they would love to have a Jarry-Skinner combination or like to have it. But no, they can\u2019t do it in their present situation unless bodies go out. So basically what I was told was could it happen? Possibly. Would they like it to happen? Yeah, I think they would be interested. Can it happen? Very, very hard, and may not happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Time will tell whether or not these sides will be able to consummate a deal \u2014 one that would almost surely require the Penguins to change their stance on salary retention \u2014 but it\u2019s unlikely we\u2019ve heard the last of this story.<\/p>\n Zach Laing is Oilersnation\u2019s associate editor, senior columnist, and The Nation Network\u2019s news director. He also makes up one-half of the Daily Faceoff DFS Hockey Report<\/a>. He can be followed on X at @zjlaing<\/a>, or reached by email at zach.laing@bettercollective.com.ARTICLE PRESENTED BY bet365<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oilers rumours: Potential trade for Tristan Jarry wouldn\u2019t include Skinner, Penguins \u2018absolutely unwilling\u2019 to retain salary The Edmonton…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-333962","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}