Jarry, Pens blank Jets, 3-0 Jarry makes 23 saves for shutout

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In Pittsburgh, Sean Monahan made his debut with the Winnipeg Jets on Tuesday, but to little avail as the Penguins’ Tristan Jarry made 23 saves in a 3-0 shutout of the Jets “We all did the right thing. I think that gave us the upper hand tonight,” Jarry said. “Obviously, we’re not in the position that we want to be. I think, obviously, that’s the goal. We want to be in a playoff position. That’s going to be the goal at the end of the season.”

The Pens improved to 23-17-7.

Kris Letang staked the Pens to a 1-0 lead at 7:16 of  the opening stanza.

“It hasn’t been a strength of our overall team game in this first part of the season,” Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said of the first period. “A lot of it is a mindset going in and a certain discipline to play the game the right way. … I thought we made pretty good decisions with the puck, for the most part, against a team that’s hard to play against.”

The Jets dropped to 30-13-5.

“The similarity in the four games right now is our inability to score,” Winnipeg coach Rick Bowness said. “We’re not getting outplayed. We’re just not scoring right now. The offense is a little out of sync.”

The Penguins added two more markers to their lead in the middle frame.

Both goals were scored off a five-minute major assessed to Brenden Dillon, who who called for an illegal hit to the head.

“Five minutes is a long time,” Winnipeg defenseman Neal Pionk said. “They got a couple bounces, but at the end of the day, our kill has to get the job done. They beat us in the special teams tonight. Plain and simple.”

He was also given a match penalty.

Jeff scored first on the major, at 7:33 of the middle frame for a 2-0 lead.

Midway through the second, Bryan Rust made it 3-0  off the same penalty.

“Sometimes you just need change,” the Pens’ Jake Guentzel, said. “And when it’s not going well, change is inevitable. … It’s a little bit of a wakeup call for us to move the puck a little quicker and just get shots on net.”

Connor Hellebuyck made 24 saves in the loss..

“We had a ton of good looks. [Jarry] made some big saves,” the Jets Matt Scheifele said. “They blocked a lot of shots, had some good sticks. I don’t think it’s anything to get frustrated about. We made a lot of good plays. We had a lot of good entries. Nothing to be frustrated about there.”