Avs and Red Wings gambling bigger on goaltending than the Leafs did
It would be underselling it if I said that the early response to the Matt Murray trade to Toronto has not been received well by a large portion of the fanbase. The fact of the matter is that we have evidence that Murray can win.
Dismiss, if you will, his run in Ottawa (who was in the midst of a rebuild and was an absolute disaster in front of Murray) after coming over from Pittsburgh a couple years back. Murray was not only a starter in Pittsburgh for 4 seasons, but he was largely a pretty good one. Over his 4-year run as #1 in Pittsburgh, Murray posted a very respectable .912 sv%. If you remove his disastrous 38-game season in 2019-20, his collective sv% in 3 years as a starter was a .916.
A closer look into his 2019-20 season shows that he was actually playing elite hockey for the Pens in both October and January, posting .923 and .929 save percentages, respectively. His worst month was November that year, which saw him put up an abysmal .867 sv% in 10 games. An even closer look revealed that it was really only 4 games that completely tanked his numbers that month. (a .815 agasint St. Louis, a .717 against Vancouver, a .833 against Long Island and a .727 against Boston). If you take out those 4 games, that combined .867 sv% becomes a .901 sv% and Murray is above .900 on the whole year. Funny how much a few games in a down year can really skew people's opinions on an otherwise solid goaltender.
Let's not kid ourselves here. His numbers during the rebuild in Ottawa were always going to be poor. His 2020-21 season was likely the only truly forgettable one in his career. Murray posted a .893 sv% in his first season in Ottawa, but the devil is in the details. He made it into 27 games across a 4 month span from January-April and posted a collective .904 sv% in February and a stellar .954 sv% in April. The 11 games he played split between January and March amounted to a combined .855 sv%, which pulled his season total down to .893.
Throughout his tenure in Ottawa, he was able to post some very good numbers on a very bad team. However, because most people don't delve too beyond the surface numbers, it's easy to see why there is so much pessimism over the move.
It's worth stating that Matt Murray in Toronto is not the same as Matt Murray in Ottawa. In Toronto, Murray will be playing behind a better defense corps, a strong two-way system driven by puck possession and a vastly superior penalty kill. Unfortunately, the Leafs do tend to allow a lot of odd-man rushes, which aren't exactly Murray's strong suit, but an increased focus on team defense and playing the right way should give Murray every opportunity to be successful in Toronto.
Murray at $4.68M for two seasons may seem like a problematic deal, but really it's not nearly as risky as the moves and commitments that Detroit and Colorado made to Ville Husso and Alexandar Georgiev. The Leafs wound up with a two-time Stanley Cup winner and a pair of draft picks for free, while Detroit paid a premium to get Husso and then signed him for 3 seasons at $4.75M. That's one hell of a commitment to a goalie who hasn't proven much of anything yet.
On the Avs' end, they gave up a trio of draft picks for a player who has never been a starter and who actually posted worse numbers than Murray last year and then subsequently locked him up for 3 years at $3.4M per season. I have to think that if the Leafs had made either of these moves, the fanbase would have imploded. Sure, you could argue that the Wings and Avs are paying for potential, but even then, Murray is only 28 himself. There is still plenty of potential for him to turn it around and show greater improvements this season than both Husso and Georgiev.
To me, I just look at this scenario and I see one team landing a proven commodity, whose circumstances and situation in Ottawa may be more to blame for his numbers than his actual play - and two other teams who seem to be taking more of a gamble on unproven commodities. Not only that, but with the Leafs being paid to take Murray and the Wings and Avs paying for their gambles, I like the value here from the Leafs' standpoint.
| POLL | ||
JUILLET 12 | 498 ANSWERS Avs and Red Wings gambling bigger on goaltending than the Leafs did Who do you think is taking the biggest gamble in goal this year? | ||
| Detroit with Husso | 73 | 14.7 % |
| Colorado with Georgiev | 89 | 17.9 % |
| Toronto with Murray | 308 | 61.8 % |
| Other | 28 | 5.6 % |
| List of polls | ||
