Matt Murray absent from Saturday's morning skate; should we be alarmed?
Game day skates in Toronto have held an "optional" tag during the entirety of the Sheldon Keefe era, but while many players choose to take the morning skate off before a game, usually we always see both goaltenders take to the ice, even if only briefly.
On Saturday, ahead of the Leafs' grudge match against the Edmonton Oilers, this time on home turf, Matt Murray was nowhere to be found for the morning skate. Is there are a reason to be concerned? Not necessarily. Keefe already confirmed earlier this week that Murray was expected to start tonight against the Oilers. Still, with his injury history, you can never be too sure.
Typically, when Murray is in line to start, he'll take to the ice for a quick warm-up before being the first goalie off the ice. The fact that he's not on the ice at all on Saturday has many curious as to whether or not he tweaked something in his loss to the Canucks last Saturday. Murray looked sharp early on in that game, but as the night wore on and as the team got sloppier in front of him, he began to look more and more human.
If this seems like over-worrying, it might be. Of course, we all know what happened the last time Murray tweaked something. We saw Murray pulled from his scheduled start during the pre-game warm ups and against his former Ottawa Senators, and Ilya Samsonov had to play unexpectedly. Hopefully Murray is good to go, but we won't likely know, unfortunately, until the pre-game warmups.
