Rookie goaltender Joel Blomqvist, optioned to the AHL on Thursday, has established himself as Pittsburgh's best goaltender. How can they open an opportunity for him?
For much of the season, the Pittsburgh Penguins were carrying three goaltenders on their roster in Tristan Jarry, Alex Nedeljkovic, and rookie Joel Blomqvist.
However, because of injuries to the forward group, the Penguins had to make some tough decisions.
On Thursday - despite being the Penguins' best goaltender up to this point in the season - Blomqvist was optioned to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton (WBS), Pittsburgh's AHL affiliate, to make way for the Penguins to recall two healthy forwards.
The Penguins want Blomqvist around at the NHL level, and, aside from an outlier of a bad performance by him in Monday's 7-1 loss to the Dallas Stars, he was pretty steadily turning in solid performances.
Before Monday's loss, Blomqvist was riding a 3.25 goals-against average and a .913 save percentage, and even his updated numbers of 3.60 and .904, respectively, are still the best marks on the team. He has also faced far more shots on goal than both Nedeljkovic and Jarry: His 261 total shots faced over eight games are more than Nedeljkovic's (251 in nine games) and Jarry's (111 in four games), and those eight games include that 8-shot Dallas performance before his pulling during the first period.
So what should the Penguins do? In this week's episode of Pucks N'at, we discuss the inevitability of a goaltending trade on the horizon for the Penguins.
