SAN JOSE, Calif. — It’s only two weeks into the season, but the Pittsburgh Penguins are one of the NHL’s early surprises.

Tristan Jarry is very much part of that story.

The goaltender, twice vanished to the AHL last season, has been good in two of his first three starts of the season and put a punctuation mark on his early work with a 3-0 victory against the San Jose Sharks Saturday at SAP Center. It marks Jarry’s 22nd career shutout. He made 31 saves.

While the score would indicate that it may have been a plodding, slow-paced game, it was anything but. This was an up-tempo contest with scoring chances throughout, and former teammates Jarry and Alex Nedeljkovic both played exceptionally well. Jarry, though, got the better of his friend.

Looking for some goal highlights…

But for now, we’ll leave you with this from Jars ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/tyvqccsyDv

— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) October 19, 2025

 

“I thought Tristan was awesome tonight,” Dan Muse said.

Jarry was especially good in the game’s early minutes, when the Sharks enjoyed a number of quality scoring chances. He not only made some outstanding saves, but also made them look easy.

The goaltender was tremendously sharp, and it can’t go unnoticed that he was so good in the early minutes because last season he was historically bad in those situations, allowing the opposing team to score on the first shot six times.

Jarry is well aware of this and spoke about it following Saturday’s win.

“I think it’s a mentality,” he said of his early-game sharpness. “I’ve been working on getting off to a good start. That’s one thing I wanted to work on this year. Going out there with a confidence, standing tall. knowing you’re going to make those first saves. That’s something that’s changed.”

This is the second shutout of the season for the Penguins, as Artūrs Šilovs started the season by blanking the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden. That game was slow-paced and defensively suffocating. This game was nothing like it, especially in the first 30 minutes. Jarry, though, never wavered. The Penguins actually outplayed the Sharks most of the night, but Nedeljkovic matched Jarry save for save.

Still, Jarry kept the game even until some big guns finally went to work for the Penguins.

“I thought he did a really good job,” Justin Brazeau said. “We gave them some pretty good looks.”

Sidney Crosby got the Penguins on the board midway through the second period with a vintage deflection.

Kris Letang and Sidney Crosby. An iconic duo. pic.twitter.com/90u4aZXSVP

— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) October 19, 2025

Anthony Mantha made it 2-0 in the third thanks largely to a spectacular play from Brazeau, who weaved his way around Macklin Celebrini before delivering a nifty feed to Mantha.

Size and skill on full display 💪 pic.twitter.com/2a6H2zCdUa

— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) October 19, 2025

It was quite a play from Brazeau, who has blown the Penguins away with his hands in the season’s first six games.

“Definitely, confidence is high right now,” Brazeau said. “I’m just trying to play off my instincts and make whatever play is there.”

The Penguins made plenty of the right plays on this night and on this California road trip. They finished the trip with a 2-1 mark and are now 4-2 on the season.

Whenever they didn’t make the right play, their goaltender had their backs.

Ten postgame observations 

• One of the best players on the ice Saturday night was the youngest. Ben Kindel was simply superb.

No, he didn’t have a point, but it didn’t matter. Kindel was a two-way force throughout the evening; he could have had multiple points and was, quite simply, impressive.

Members of the Penguins’ coaching staff were gushing about his performance following the game. So were some of his teammates. Kindel produced a ridiculous backcheck in the second period, when he and his teammates were out of gas.

“We were all kind of tired,” Kindel said. “Kind of a breakdown. Just tried to get back, take my guy.”

I’m not seeing any reasons why he should be sent back to junior hockey. I was completely wrong about this kid a month ago, when I thought there was no reason for him to be in the NHL.

• He makes it look so easy, but very few people in the world can deflect pucks like Crosby. That goal was a classic example of his hands and imagination.

Crosby hasn’t quite been at his best through six games, which has been pretty typical of recent October performances from the Penguins captain. He’s been perfectly fine but isn’t peaking by any stretch.

And yet … he’s got seven points in six games, which puts him on an early pace for 96 points. In the past three seasons, he’s produced 93, 94 and 91 points, respectively.

He’s a marvel. Don’t take him for granted.

• It’s time to start talking about Brazeau. How about the pair of hands on this guy? He isn’t a great skater, but when you’re that big and your hands are that good, you don’t really need to be.

He’s been a revelation and I can assure you the coaching staff is delighted with him.

I don’t know if he can keep this level up, but if he can, he makes the Penguins a much different team.

• That’s the best game I’ve seen Jarry play in a couple of years. Everything about his performance — even the subtle poke checks we saw — was flawless. High marks to Jarry and goaltending coach Andy Chiodo. Whatever they’re doing right now is working.

• The few people in the lineup who are struggling continued to struggle. Kris Letang had an assist, but he looked off most of the evening and is turning the puck over with unfortunate consistency.

Something is not right with his game.

I didn’t like Tommy Novak’s game, either. He looks pretty lost.

• We know that, on paper, the left side of the Penguins’ blue line is a weakness. However, it was very good against the Sharks.

Caleb Jones had by far his best game of the season, and Parker Wotherspoon continues to excel playing beside Erik Karlsson. Both were excellent.

• Few players over the years have come through the Penguins locker room and become an immediate hit quite like Nedeljkovic. He’s just a different kind of guy. In an era of athletes speaking cliches like they’re gospel, Nedeljkovic speaks from the heart. He is one of the most authentic athletes to play in Pittsburgh in recent memory.

He will have his hands full with this San Jose roster, but I wish him well. Truly one of the good guys.

• In what has become something of a regular occurrence, Philip Tomasino was a healthy scratch against the Sharks. This marks the third time in six games this season in which Tomasino has watched from the press box.

He has failed to register a point in three games played. He’s also failed to make any kind of impact.

Tomasino is an intriguing player. He’s a 2019 first-round pick who scored 11 goals in 50 games with the Penguins last season, which isn’t an insignificant number. When he does score, his talent is typically on display. Tomasino can really skate and owns a slick pair of hands.

So far this season, however, he’s looked like a lesser player than what we saw following his trade from Nashville last November. Furthermore, Tomasino is starting to look like the kind of guy who isn’t going to help a team if he isn’t scoring — and so far this season, he isn’t scoring.

• The Penguins have won the Stanley Cup five times and, in one of the great oddities in a franchise history full of them, they clinched the championship on the road in all five instances.

Only two of the buildings in which the Penguins claimed championships remain. I bring this up for a reason.

This could be Evgeni Malkin’s final season. We don’t know yet. If it is, he just played for the final time in a building in which the Penguins claimed the Stanley Cup. It was fitting that he ended the game with an empty net goal.

The Met Center (Minnesota), Chicago Stadium and Joe Louis Arena (Detroit) were all demolished a decade or less after the Penguins claimed the Stanley Cup in those respective buildings for various reasons. Only two buildings where the Penguins have won the Stanley Cup — the SAP Center (San Jose) and Bridgestone Arena (Nashville) — remain active. The Penguins won the Stanley Cup in San Jose on June 12, 2016. They don’t play in Nashville this season because the Penguins and Predators will play twice in Sweden.

• The Penguins will fly home on Sunday morning, practice Monday and then host the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday. Then, they’ll head right back on the road, playing in Sunrise, Fla., against the defending champion Panthers on Thursday as the schedule stays busy. This is part of a stretch that sees the Penguins play 11 of 16 games on the road, including games in three different time zones and three different countries (the United States, Canada and Sweden).