There are a lot of surprising developments about the 2025-26 Pittsburgh Penguins, but the most surprising of them all, and perhaps the most impactful of them all, is the resurgence of starting goalie Tristan Jarry. He enters play on Thursday with an 8-2-1 record and .911 save percentage in his first 11 appearances and has been a big reason the Penguins have won some of their recent games. He’s been good. Really good. He has also been good enough that it is time to end the goalie rotation the Penguins have been leaning on for much of the season.

The goalie rotation was a good idea at the start, and it mostly accomplished its goal of giving everybody playing time and seeing what they can do.

But it only made sense until somebody started to stake a claim to the position and outperform the other.

That is starting to happen.

While Jarry’s play has improved, the play of Arturs Silovs has steadily regressed from his strong start to the season.

The Penguins should not give up on Silovs. He is still an intriguing player to have on the roster and young enough that he could still be a part of the team for a few years. But in the short-term the Penguins’ situation has changed due to their strong start. The playoffs are not only a reasonable goal at this point, they are very much in play and attainable. As the play of the team changes, so do the expectations around it. The Penguins are now in a position where they can not let points slip away.

That means it is time to start riding the hot hand in net, and that hot hand currently belongs to Jarry.

It is as much about his own play as it is about Silovs’ play.

While Jarry has been mostly solid since returning from injury, Silovs has been pulled in each of his past two starts and allowed eight goals on 20 shots in the process. He also just hasn’t looked all that good even when he is stopping the puck.

The catch here, unfortunately, is there really is not any secret or great unknown about what Jarry is as a goalie. For as much as he has struggled at times in his career, he has also put together extensive stretches of play where he has been really good and looked like a quality starting goalie. He does, after all, have two All-Star Game appearances on his resume. This is not new. We have seen this before. The problem has always been the way he wears down later in seasons and becomes more unreliable the more he plays.

That was one of the intriguing things about the goalie rotation early on. Could limiting his usage and playing time and workload lead to a stronger second half performance? Perhaps.

But the rotation only works if both goalies are giving you at least passable play. And over the past week or two only one of them has.

The Penguins also have a lot of incentive for wanting Jarry to perform well and show he can still be a starting goalie. Not only because it could help them get back into the playoffs, but also because they are still a team that has at least somewhat of an eye on the future and would probably like to shed that contract. The better he plays, the more likely they can find a trade partner. That might be later this season if the team regresses and slips out of playoff contention, or even potentially after the season if he helps guide them to a playoff spot.

Sergei Murashov is still the long-term hope, and there is going to come a time where he is going to need more playing time at the NHL level. It might not be this season, but certainly at some point in the not-too-distant future. Jarry is simply not the long-term answer.

He is, however, their best option in the short-term. Silovs should still get his starts, but they should come as part of 70-30, or even 65-35, split instead of a straight 50-50 rotation. The rotation accomplished its goal early in the season. Now we are seeing one goalie start to separate themselves from the other. Go with it.