Player Discussion Matt Murray (G) - 4 years, $6.25M AAV

[DaveMatthew]

You're cherry picking small sample sizes.

He's played 32 games with us. In the first half, he has a .883, and in the second half he has a .904. To me, that's a clear trend in the right direction, which correlates with the fact that he's been reinventing his style of play with a new goalie coach.

.904 is still quite poor for a goalie with the 6th highest cap hit in the league. Is it an improvement? Sure. Does it justify his deal? No.

Look, It is what it is. I would’ve made the trade and signing myself at the time. I thought it’d work out.

But it hasn’t. No sense in sugar coating it. Murray has been a huge disappointment.

I mean, isn’t the fact that he’s had to “reinvent” himself a red flag? One of your highest paid players shouldn’t need to reinvent themselves. They should deliver results. It’d be different if he was on “prove it” deal.

 

[BonHoonLayneCornell]

Agree with this. Goalie is far more important of a position than defenseman. If we had spent Murray's $6m on a defenseman and gone bargain bin hunting for a goalie, we'd be far worse off.

Interesting you should say that, because that's not what I was implying.

It was a hypothetical that had they funneled resources into Dmen instead, then if someone were here saying they'd rather spent it on a goalie, they would have a respectable position just like someone saying the opposite now to what they did decide to do.

Personally, I disagree with you that it's as simple as the statement in bold since we're seeing the effects of the train wreck of a defense for a couple years and the effect that has had as well. I would prefer they'd thrown those resources from Murray, Dadonov and a couple low tier UFA's like Gud and/or MDZ at trying to bring in a quality needle moving defenseman or two instead. If you disagree that's all good, I just hate that it gets framed as trolling because of a couple random "Murray is trash" comments in the thread.

 

[Xspyrit]

Goalies SV% can almost be like +/-, you can't just look at it without team/coaching/structure context

There's a reason why Brian Elliott goes from 0.893 to 0.940 in one season

There's a reason why Grubauer and Driedger will have much worse stats this year. There's a reason why Frederik Andersen will "rebound" this year... etc etc etc, so many examples.

Anyone not understanding this doesn't get the whole picture, which should come with time/experience I guess. Listen to TVA/RDS, plenty of ex NHL goalies work for them. Marc Denis, Patrick Lalime, Eric Fichaud...

 

[BonHoonLayneCornell]

Agree with this. Goalie is far more important of a position than defenseman. If we had spent Murray's $6m on a defenseman and gone bargain bin hunting for a goalie, we'd be far worse off.

A simpler way to put it...

Instead of Murray, Dadonov plus a couple other D salaries like Gud or MDZ, How does this team look in front of a Gus/Forsberg (or other vet) tandem with 4 solid top 4 dmen? While bumping guys like Zaitsev down to the 3rd pair where they can be more effective?

The answer is its a team a lot closer to fighting for a playoff spot than a team with Murray in a 1a/1b scenario with only two good top 4 dmen.

The same argument that Gus needed to learn from Murray and have him there to lean on could be applied to the D and Its easier to then let your young D learn the ropes since youre giving them quality partners and being able to stay down the depth chart.

 

[Ice-Tray]

I’m still of a mind that Murray is a lot better than he’s getting credit for. He has played really well this season, but he hasn’t been able to get on a roll due to flue and COVID. Lots of time for that.

Forsberg is an NHL backup and not a player that you want holding the net while Gus learns the ropes.

Is kind of like when Gonchar came here. If we want to believe that Gus is the heir apparent, I’m happy that he’s plying behind, and will be taking the net, from a guy who won two cups, and was instrumental in those wins, and he did it at an age similar to Gus. It’s the exact type of experience we want around the kids.

Money is not an issue here, if anything Murray is helping make sure we hit the floor. But if I had to choose one or the other, I’d take Murray over Savard or any of the other guys people were pining over this summer. He is waaaay more important.

Swift nailed it. Murray is the exact type of pick up people hoped we’d make on D, but in a much more important position. If we want anyone to be able to play with confidence, forwards or D, then they need steady goaltending. If we want our young players to be able to develop and learn and play a system, we need steady goaltending.

Murray has given that to us from his return last season until now. Gus has been great coming in, and Forsberg has been up and down in spot duty.

We absolutely need this guy no matter what phase of the rebuild we’re in, not a question for me. I’m not going go round in circles, I have read and understand your positions, I just disagree with them.

 

[bicboi64]

Money is not an issue here, if anything Murray is helping make sure we hit the floor. But if I had to choose one or the other, I’d take Murray over Savard or any of the other guys people were pining over this summer. He is waaaay more important.
.

I'd disagree based off the statement about Savard. I feel Savard would've been the perfect signing for Ottawa. Savard would play in the top 4 and push someone down in the pairings which has an added effect of helping the D. Guys like Zaitsev aren't being overused and Zub doesn't have to start playing #2 minutes. Forsberg isn't a full time starter, but a defense with someone like Savard where everyone else plays a role better suited for them would've insulated goalies like Forsberg (who just aren't the best) and Gus (who'd benefit from having a competent D). With Murray and our sorry arse defense, its a lose lose situation where we are screwed unless Murray stands on his head.

 

[Yak]

I’m still of a mind that Murray is a lot better than he’s getting credit for. He has played really well this season, but he hasn’t been able to get on a roll due to flue and COVID. Lots of time for that.

Forsberg is an NHL backup and not a player that you want holding the net while Gus learns the ropes.

Is kind of like when Gonchar came here. If we want to believe that Gus is the heir apparent, I’m happy that he’s plying behind, and will be taking the net, from a guy who won two cups, and was instrumental in those wins, and he did it at an age similar to Gus. It’s the exact type of experience we want around the kids.

Money is not an issue here, if anything Murray is helping make sure we hit the floor. But if I had to choose one or the other, I’d take Murray over Savard or any of the other guys people were pining over this summer. He is waaaay more important.

Swift nailed it. Murray is the exact type of pick up people hoped we’d make on D, but in a much more important position. If we want anyone to be able to play with confidence, forwards or D, then they need steady goaltending. If we want our young players to be able to develop and learn and play a system, we need steady goaltending.

Murray has given that to us from his return last season until now. Gus has been great coming in, and Forsberg has been up and down in spot duty.

We absolutely need this guy no matter what phase of the rebuild we’re in, not a question for me. I’m not going go round in circles, I have read and understand your positions, I just disagree with them.

I honestly am unsure how I feel about Murray at this point.

I see your arguments and other as well. I feel is best we reserve judgement till season is done.

He could be a good mentor for Gus even though Gus is doing well.

This could be a situation where it turns around or is not a good fit. Time will tell.

Between Covid and Injuries I really feel is hard to get a proper gauge on our team between last year and this year.

 

[Micklebot]

Agree with this. Goalie is far more important of a position than defenseman. If we had spent Murray's $6m on a defenseman and gone bargain bin hunting for a goalie, we'd be far worse off.

How so? We'd likely have Gustavsson as our number one, and a bargain bin goalie making backup money as our backup.

I mean, until Murray outperforms our other goalies I don't think you can really claim we'd be worse off without him little lone with his money put towards a top 4 Dman.

 

[Burrowsaurus]

You're cherry picking small sample sizes.

He's played 32 games with us. In the first half, he has a .883, and in the second half he has a .904. To me, that's a clear trend in the right direction, which correlates with the fact that he's been reinventing his style of play with a new goalie coach.

This is also cherry picking stats

 

[swiftwin]

How so? We'd likely have Gustavsson as our number one, and a bargain bin goalie making backup money as our backup.

I mean, until Murray outperforms our other goalies I don't think you can really claim we'd be worse off without him little lone with his money put towards a top 4 Dman.

Are you telling me that the plan should have been to get a cheap goalie with the expectation that Gustavsson would become our #1 goalie at the start of last season, with a grand total of 0 NHL games? After coming off a very poor season in Belleville??? (.889)

People in this thread seem to struggle with the timelines here, bringing up players like Forsberg, etc.

At the time we signed Matt Murray, these were the goalies in our organization (with previous season in brackets):
Marcus Hogberg (NHL 24GP .904; AHL 15GP .897) - 28 games of NHL experience & same age as Matt Murray
Joey Daccord (AHL 24GP .915; ECHL 12GP .901) - 1 game of NHL experience
Filip Gustavsson (AHL 24GP .889) - 0 games of NHL experience

With only those 3 goalies in our system, we should have gone bargain bin hunting for a goalie in favor of getting a higher priced defenseman?!!?!? With the expectation that Gustavsson would become our #1?!?!?!?!

Also, Murray IS outperforming our other goalies. In their last 10 games, Murray has a much higher save pct than Gustavsson (.934 vs .924), and since Gus played his first NHL game, Murray and Gus have the same save pct (.924).

 

[swiftwin]

This is also cherry picking stats

I'm literally doing the opposite. I grabbed his entire 32 games as a Senator, and used the largest possible sample size to show progression (splitting his 32 games into two halves). I literally cannot use a larger sample size to show A) his time with the Sens, and B) compare how he started to how he's playing now.

If I wanted to cherry pick a small sample size, I would do what Mendes did and only show his last 10 games, where he's a .932

 

[bert]

.904 is still quite poor for a goalie with the 6th highest cap hit in the league. Is it an improvement? Sure. Does it justify his deal? No.

Look, It is what it is. I would’ve made the trade and signing myself at the time. I thought it’d work out.

But it hasn’t. No sense in sugar coating it. Murray has been a huge disappointment.

I mean, isn’t the fact that he’s had to “reinvent” himself a red flag? One of your highest paid players shouldn’t need to reinvent themselves. They should deliver results. It’d be different if he was on “prove it” deal.

This post is bang on. I liked the deal at the time. Small over pay from a salary stand point but it was the right idea. I actually think he is a good goalie he just can't stay healthy long enough to get into a groove of consistent play.

Staying healthy is a skill, he is just really bad at it. Gotta wonder how he is treating his body to be this injury/sick prone.

 

[PlayOn]

Are you telling me that the plan should have been to get a cheap goalie with the expectation that Gustavsson would become our #1 goalie at the start of last season, with a grand total of 0 NHL games? After coming off a very poor season in Belleville??? (.889)

People in this thread seem to struggle with the timelines here, bringing up players like Forsberg, etc.

At the time we signed Matt Murray, these were the goalies in our organization (with previous season in brackets):
Marcus Hogberg (NHL 24GP .904; AHL 15GP .897) - 28 games of NHL experience & same age as Matt Murray
Joey Daccord (AHL 24GP .915; ECHL 12GP .901) - 1 game of NHL experience
Filip Gustavsson (AHL 24GP .889) - 0 games of NHL experience

With only those 3 goalies in our system, we should have gone bargain bin hunting for a goalie in favor of getting a higher priced defenseman?!!?!?

Also, Murray IS outperforming our other goalies. In their last 10 games, Murray has a much higher save pct than Gustavsson (.934 vs .924), and since Gus played his first NHL game, Murray and Gus have the same save pct (.924).

Yeah, we 100% needed to spend on a goalie, especially with our team defence or lack thereof. Gus can come in and play when we need him but if he’s our #1 guy he has all kinds of pressure on him at a young age, and things likely go south.

There’s potential that the Murray contract is a year too long if he doesn’t find his form completely but I don’t see it as a huge deal. I’m actually more concerned about his injuries than his play overall - we need him to be healthy next year so Gus doesn’t end up playing like 60 games lol.

 

[Micklebot]

I'm literally doing the opposite. I grabbed his entire 32 games as a Senator, and used the largest possible sample size to show progression (splitting his 32 games into two halves). I literally cannot use a larger sample size to show A) his time with the Sens, and B) compare how he started to how he's playing now.

If I wanted to cherry pick a small sample size, I would do what Mendes did and only show his last 10 games, where he's a .932

His entire time as a sen is too small a sample to really draw conclusions from when you start trying to break it into chunks, that's the problem.

Why not include his last season as a Penguin? Perhaps because it shows he hasn't really changed since switching teams?

Like I said before, he reworked his fundamentals, give it some time and we'll see what the results are, it's too early yet to tell.

 

[swiftwin]

This post is bang on. I liked the deal at the time. Small over pay from a salary stand point but it was the right idea. I actually think he is a good goalie he just can't stay healthy long enough to get into a groove of consistent play.

Staying healthy is a skill, he is just really bad at it. Gotta wonder how he is treating his body to be this injury/sick prone.

I'm ok with this stance. No doubt he's been a disappointment in performance to start last season (the team sucking didn't help either), then when he corrected that and started playing better, he became a disappointment in terms of staying healthy. Likely due to his changing style of play. I don't know if you guys remember the interview with the goalie coach last season, he explained that his old style was not very athletic, and relied on covering the net very well and playing the percentages. But the NHL has moved towards alot of side-to-side plays, which forces goalies to be more athletic (which is why Vaslievskiy is so good). So, Murray switching to play a more athletic style likely led to some of his injuries last season. But that switch is style definitely showed promise, and he was outstanding.

Then he corrected that by coming into camp this year much fitter, stronger and heavier, only to catch the flu, get kneed in the head by Kreider and now catch COVID. None of these things are really fitness or athleticism related.

 

[swiftwin]

His entire time as a sen is too small a sample to really draw conclusions from when you start trying to break it into chunks, that's the problem.

Why not include his last season as a Penguin? Perhaps because it shows he hasn't really changed since switching teams?

Like I said before, he reworked his fundamentals, give it some time and we'll see what the results are, it's too early yet to tell.

Then where do you draw the line? Why not include his cup winning seasons?

We know what his last seasons as a Penguin were. We obviously didn't acquire him because of his performance in those seasons. We acquired him with the expectation that he would improve and return to his former self. I showed in the boradest / largest sample size possible that he's been improving during his time with the Sens.

The only two options are to either A) Agree that he's been trending in the right direction to become his former self, or B) to say that it's still too early to tell due to small sample size (so yes, I agree with you there).

You could also claim that fitness/health is an issue (maybe it was last season), but I would argue that this season, catching the flu, getting kneed in the head and catching covid are not fitness related injuries.

 

[Micklebot]

Then where do you draw the line? Why not include his cup winning seasons?

We know what his last seasons as a Penguin were. We obviously didn't acquire him because of his performance in those seasons. We acquired him with the expectation that he would improve and return to his former self. I showed in the boradest / largest sample size possible that he's been improving during his time with the Sens.

The only two options are to either A) Agree that he's been trending in the right direction to become his former self, or B) to say that it's still too early to tell due to small sample size (so yes, I agree with you there).

You could also claim that fitness/health is an issue (maybe it was last season), but I would argue that this season, catching the flu, getting kneed in the head and catching covid are not fitness related injuries.

There's a knee jerk reaction to justify or trash the trade here, trending in the right direction isn't really meaningful a couple bad games are enough to entirely reverse it. Both sides just need to let things play out.

 

[OD99]

You can look at the stats, compare to other goalies, see the trend, rankings, etc...any way you look at it GMPD was taking a gamble and betting far too much on it.

Murray's numbers never deserved top 6 money and the timing of paying him this much for this long was and is absurd. Going back to 2017/18 he had a .919 sv% and he was 13th back then. The season prior he was .909% and ranked 57 (Forsberg ranked 51 at 908%)

Since, the numbers go down, the injuries pile up, the form is questioned and revamped...please tell me how this was a good signing? Other than the concept of getting a decent vet to insulate the kids while we matured as an org the whole thing was not smart. Lots of goalies could have come in and done what Murray has and we see it every year in the NHL. Hell we got Forsberg off waivers if I remember correctly and he has similar numbers to Matt even with some really tough outings this season.

 

[Xspyrit]

You can look at the stats, compare to other goalies, see the trend, rankings, etc...any way you look at it GMPD was taking a gamble and betting far too much on it.

Murray's numbers never deserved top 6 money and the timing of paying him this much for this long was and is absurd. Going back to 2017/18 he had a .919 sv% and he was 13th back then. The season prior he was .909% and ranked 57 (Forsberg ranked 51 at 908%)

Since, the numbers go down, the injuries pile up, the form is questioned and revamped...please tell me how this was a good signing? Other than the concept of getting a decent vet to insulate the kids while we matured as an org the whole thing was not smart. Lots of goalies could have come in and done what Murray has and we see it every year in the NHL. Hell we got Forsberg off waivers if I remember correctly and he has similar numbers to Matt even with some really tough outings this season.

It was 2018-19

I'm not sure why everyone makes this same factual mistake... I'm not joking, everytime I read about this it's "he didn't have good numbers in his last 2 years with Pittsburgh"...

Matt Murray Stats | Hockey-Reference.com

But totally agree that the contract Dorion gave him was too much too long too premature. He didn't even provide him a NHL defense

 

[Burrowsaurus]

I'm literally doing the opposite. I grabbed his entire 32 games as a Senator, and used the largest possible sample size to show progression (splitting his 32 games into two halves). I literally cannot use a larger sample size to show A) his time with the Sens, and B) compare how he started to how he's playing now.

If I wanted to cherry pick a small sample size, I would do what Mendes did and only show his last 10 games, where he's a .932

That’s not what you cherry picked. You cherry picked the save %. And how it went up. Even the slightest amount shows a trend in positive direction. Not really
How it works especially the sample size is small (even though you picked ALL his games, it’s still too small to show any sort of progression.

 

[OD99]

It was 2018-19

I'm not sure why everyone makes this same factual mistake... I'm not joking, everytime I read about this it's "he didn't have good numbers in his last 2 years with Pittsburgh"...

Matt Murray Stats | Hockey-Reference.com

But totally agree that the contract Dorion gave him was too much too long too premature. He didn't even provide him a NHL defense

Just an honest mistake.

I saw he was .909 in 2017/18 and meant to suggest that - I never mentioned anything about his last years in Pitt, just going back to when the decline began.

 

[Ice-Tray]

I'd disagree based off the statement about Savard. I feel Savard would've been the perfect signing for Ottawa. Savard would play in the top 4 and push someone down in the pairings which has an added effect of helping the D. Guys like Zaitsev aren't being overused and Zub doesn't have to start playing #2 minutes. Forsberg isn't a full time starter, but a defense with someone like Savard where everyone else plays a role better suited for them would've insulated goalies like Forsberg (who just aren't the best) and Gus (who'd benefit from having a competent D). With Murray and our sorry arse defense, its a lose lose situation where we are screwed unless Murray stands on his head.

Except Savard hasn’t been good, and you’d be giving the team the MDZ treatments but far worse because he’s be make twice the cash for twice the term.

Sometimes the best moves are the ones you don’t make.

 

[bicboi64]

Except Savard hasn’t been good, and you’d be giving the team the MDZ treatments but far worse because he’s be make twice the cash for twice the term.

Sometimes the best moves are the ones you don’t make.

No one in MTL has been good and Savard has a solid history of being a shut down defender with CBJ and was great with TBL during their cup run. MDZ doesn't have that history and neither has Murray. Its an apples an oranges comparison

 

[swiftwin]

No one in MTL has been good and Savard has a solid history of being a shut down defender with CBJ and was great with TBL during their cup run. MDZ doesn't have that history and neither has Murray. Its an apples an oranges comparison

Hol up.

Savard doesn't count because he has a history of being good in the past, and is now stuck with a bad team (that made the SCF last season???)

But Matt Murray counts because he doesn't have a history (hello??? 2 cups???), and is playing behind a good Sens defense???

 

[bicboi64]

Hol up.

Savard doesn't count because he has a history of being good in the past, and is now stuck with a bad team (that made the SCF last season???)

But Matt Murray counts because he doesn't have a history (hello??? 2 cups???), and is playing behind a good Sens defense???

Murray was on the decline after those two cups. Are we going to ignore how no statistics show him being a good goalie, let alone top 10 after his cups?

Not to mention, there are/were other options that are cheaper in net. Exactly who has PD brought in for defensive help? How many top4 RD are out there on the market as oppose to a goalie that can play the role of stop gap?