The Pittsburgh Penguins have re-signed their long-time goaltender of the future.

Now, they just have to figure out the future of their goaltender with two Stanley Cup rings.

On Saturday, the team re-signed Tristan Jarry, a pending restricted free agent, to a three-year contract that carries a salary cap hit of $3.5 million.

Jarry, 25, emerged in 2019-20 as an All-Star during his first full season at the NHL level. In 33 games, he had a 20-12-1 record along with a 2.43 goals-against average, a .921 save percentage and three shutouts. He just completed a two-year contract with a salary cap hit of $675,000.

“I just wanted to be able to make an impact whenever I stepped on the ice,” Jarry said via video conference with local media. “That was a big stepping stone for me (in 2019-20).”

Just over a year ago during the 2019 training camp, Jarry was battling with reserve goaltender Casey DeSmith to make the NHL roster. Now, he’s the favorite to be the the Penguins’ undisputed No. 1 goaltender.

“His progression has been very, very good if you follow it,” general manager Jim Rutherford said in a phone interview with the Tribune-Review. “From his first year of pro to his development through Wilkes-Barre to the experience that he got coming in (2019-20) and really given the opportunity to show what he’s got. And he did. He earned the right to be in the All-Star Game. So his development is good.

“He’s at the age where he will continue to develop and get better. We were able to get one year back from him as an unrestricted free agent, which was important, and we were able to get a nice contract that we were comfortable with and that he was comfortable with. But we think a lot of him and really believe in him that he’ll have a great future.”

A second-round pick in 2013 under former general manager Ray Shero, Jarry originally was seen as the potential successor to former franchise goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury.

Of course, Matt Murray assumed that role before Jarry as the team’s starting goaltender for the past handful of seasons and led the franchise to Stanley Cup titles in 2016 and ’17. Since those triumphs, Murray has been inconsistent. In 2019-20, while platooning with Jarry, Murray appeared in 38 games, had a 20-11-5 record along with a 2.87 goals-against average, an .899 save percentage and one shutout.

A third-round pick in 2012, Murray, 26, just completed a three-year contract with a salary cap hit of $3.75 million and is scheduled to become a restricted free agent once the NHL’s free agency period opens Friday.

In the short term, the Penguins plan on extending a qualifying offer to Murray and could go to arbitration with him just as a formality to retain his signing rights.

“We’ll qualify him next week,” Rutherford said. “I would suspect it will be an arbitration case, and we’ll just walk through it as each event comes along.”

The deadline to extend qualifying offers to pending restricted free agents is 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Following Jarry’s signing, the Penguins have $2,634,825 of salary cap space according to Cap Friendly. Facing a salary cap crunch, Rutherford has been exploring trade options for Murray but is contending with a market bloated with potential unrestricted free agent goaltenders, most of whom are in their 30s.

Former All-Stars such as Braden Holtby (30), Corey Crawford (35) and Henrik Lundqvist (38) are scheduled to become unrestricted free agents Friday.

“It impacts the decision that teams are making,” Rutherford said. “But when you look at the free agent market, there’s good goalies but there aren’t any that are in their mid-20s that have won two Stanley (Cup titles). So it’s like going shopping. You pick what you like. If there’s a team that thinks enough of Matt, they’re going to come knocking and they’re going to make a trade. If there’s not, we will go through the process and see where the arbitration ends up.”

Rutherford declined to get into specifics about potentially trading Murray but admitted, “I’ve been talking to teams.”

The possibility of Murray remaining with the Penguins isn’t off the books.

“If we can make the numbers fit,” Rutherford said. “The numbers are very tight (with) everything we do. We would have to move things around in order to make that work, but we’ll deal with that when the time comes.”

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