The Edmonton Oilers and Pittsburgh Penguins have made a goalie trade as Stuart Skinner is off to Pennsylvania while Tristan Jarry is heading to Alberta, according to a tweet from Elliotte Friedman. Along with Jarry, minor league forward Samuel Poulin went to the Oilers while the Penguins received a second-round pick in 2029 along with defenceman Brett Kulak. Skinner is in the last year of his contract before becoming an unrestricted free agent, according to PuckPedia), Jarry has two years left after 2025-26 at $5.375-million per season, while Kulak will also be a UFA after the 2025-26 campaign.

What Pittsburgh Gets

Whatever Skinner is or isn't in a Penguins uniform, what the Penguins get is flexibility moving forward. They do not have to consider a buyout of Jarry's contract anymore, they can either re-sign Skinner or let him walk, and it creates genuine competition next season for the starting gig between Arturs Silovs and Sergei Murashov (and Skinner if he's still there). It wasn't very long ago that there was a lot of talk about Jarry being bought out by the Penguins, so that they got a comparable goalie back for him in a trade, a second-round pick (2029), and depth on the blue line is a great recoup of value for Jarry's last two months of play. That Skinner's cap hit is half of what Jarry is making this year also provides Pittsburgh with more deadline cap space (though they had lots of that to begin with).

As for the goalie himself, as mentioned, Skinner's performance has been very similar to that of Jarry: since the start of the 2023-24 season, among the 32 goalies with at least 2500 shots faced, Skinner is 19^th by Evolving Hockey's Goals Saved Above Expected metric while Jarry is 21^st. They have both been below-average starters, something that fans from both teams will nod along to.

Long story short, this shouldn't change a whole lot in net for Pittsburgh. With the obvious caveat that anything can happen with any goalie over a span of 50 team games, there isn't much that separates Skinner from Jarry, so the Penguins made a lateral move in net while adding flexibility in the future. It does hurt Skinner's potential for wins as Edmonton is the higher-scoring team right now, and likely will be for the next four months.  

Importantly, the Kulak addition seems to be a good one. If things don't work out, he's UFA at the end of the season anyway. But the Penguins are terminating Mathew Dumba's contract and Kulak, up until this year, had been solid defensive depth for the Oilers. Kulak won't have much fantasy relevance himself, but when he's at his best, he's someone who can help keep the shots against down when he's on the ice. More so than Dumba could, anyway.

What Edmonton Gets

With Jarry having two years left after this one, which mirrors the contract extension from Connor McDavid, the Oilers are pushing their chips in on Jarry being the guy he's been this year instead of the guy he was last year. As mentioned earlier, his performance is very similar to Skinner's over the last 2.5 seasons, so the only thing that really changes for Jarry is that he's now in a higher-scoring environment and that should help with his win totals. That said, he had 9 wins in 13 starts this season, and the Oilers have had their issues defensively. If they can't clean those up, Jarry may well just be Skinner 2.0. If they can, Jarry should be a fringe top-10 fantasy goalie the rest of the way.

Who This Helps

Arturs Silovs

Sergei Murashov

Tristan Jarry

Who This Hurts

Calvin Pickard

Connor Ingram