![]() The analytics weren’t in his favor against the Blackhawks, but I didn’t think Karlsson was terrible defensively. I think they’ll eventually flourish together. It will take some time for Letang and Ryan Graves to jell as a tandem, but all of the ingredients are there. He was physical with Bedard on a few occasions and I felt he was one of the Penguins’ better players. Give him an assignment, one player to focus on, and he’s actually very good defensively because of his strength and his skating ability. We’ve seen this many times over the years against Ovechkin. Letang, though, is a very strong one-on-one player. His decision-making in the defensive zone is baffling at times. Letang isn’t a great defensive player and he certainly gets lost in space at times. When he was on the ice against Bedard, I felt like he handled him well. But I thought he was very good in this game and, if anything, I think his performance was pretty encouraging. You’d love to see Jarry finish games in a stronger fashion. Logic would indicate that the Penguins would have come out flying in their home opener, but it was the Blackhawks who had the Penguins’ defense on the run for large portions of the opening period. Jarry stopped all 17 shots he faced in the first period. The Penguins and Blackhawks played a fairly even game, but if I had to give either team an edge in play, I’d side with Chicago. He stopped 32 of 35 shots and, while I suppose the final two Chicago goals came on stoppable shots, let’s recall how many Grade-A opportunities he stopped in the game’s earlier phases.
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