Just how good is Matt Murray in the playoffs?

[NyQuil]

Pretty much.

Look at the love Fleury is getting. For over a decade, he was supposedly the worst #1 goalie in the league, with 3 cups. Then he goes to VGK and he's some how turned into this unheralded underdog goalie that the Pens cast to the side for Murray, lol.

Last year, we had no business winning with that terrible defense.
This year, our biggest weakness was our defense, but only when the argument suits it. Like in this case, we're now a phenomenal team from top to bottom and Murray benefits from that. Yet he stops huge scoring chances every game in the playoffs when the games really matter.

There IS NOT a better goalie than Murray in the playoffs the last 3yrs including this one. There just isn't. The guy just turns ice cold when the playoffs start and given what he went through this year, you'd excuse the guy for some bad games, but man this guy is just the consummate professional and he treats each day as a new day, nothing carries over negatively.

Pittsburgh putting Murray in for Fleury won them the series against Ottawa.

 

[Tuna Tatarrrrrr]

23 years old

-2 Stanley Cups #1 All Time in win percentage, 2 for 2
-25-10 playoff record #1 All Time win percentage
-1.88 Goals Against #2 All Time for players born after the year 1910
-93% save percentage #3 All Time
-6 Shutouts #24 All time
-Undefeated in playoff series- #1 All Time

-For all the praise of the big 3 or 4 of the Penguins, this guy doesnt get the hype he's earned. For all the hype of Patrick Roy, this guy is beating him in all statistics in the playoffs. Playoff Brick Wall

LOL Pens fan...Patrick Roy deserves his "hype" as the greatest playoffs goalie of all time.

And as impressive Murray's numbers are, he is not Patrick Roy. Put Murray with these Habs teams during the high scoring 80's and I'm sure it would be a different story.

 

[AD1066]

Sure he's good, but it's hard to walk into a better situation than playing with Crosby, Malkin, Kessel.

 

[Vancouver Canucks]

Sure he's good, but it's hard to walk into a better situation than playing with Crosby, Malkin, Kessel.

Defense is not something of which to be proud for the Penguins, though.

 

[Commander Clueless]

Pretty darned.

 

[wgknestrick]

He's PIT's most valuable player by a mile....Let that sink in. He has a career .930SV% in the playoffs in 36 games. Price has a .914

Crosby or Malkin goes down, they still have another #1C
Letang...won the 2017 cup with him playing 0 games....could maybe do it again if they had a better #7
Murray goes down, DeSmith (AHL) or Jarry (AHL) is backing him up. It does not end well from there.

We've already seen the Murray vs MAF stats on the same team and Murray won that convincingly. Murray on VGK would go down as one of the best seasons ever.

 

[dr robbie]

He's been playing great. Can't we just leave it at that? Posting stats about per-game / averages over his entire 2 years (and 4 games) in the playoffs doesn't fairly compare him to the goaltenders of the past. If he does this for awhile or starts putting up crazy good numbers in the regular season, then that would make a little more sense. As it is, let's just enjoy the ride and see where it goes.

 

[bobholly39]

Simply put he's been perfect. Moreso than any goalie in hockey history to start his career playoffs as a goalies job is to win and he hasn't lost a series yet.

Doesn't mean he'll keep this up forever or that he'll have as good a career as Roy or any other top goalies. You need more than 2 years of course


BUT it's no reason for people to try to downplay this. What he's done so far is fantastic and worthy of praise.

 

[D Wakaluk]

Won the team community service award despite losing his dad this year, but I guess somehow he's a rat?

Good for the kid. I just remember some pretty arrogant statements from him before

 

[UnderratedBrooks44]

Good for the kid. I just remember some pretty arrogant statements from him before

He was borderline cocky in his first couple seasons. I think he's pretty vanilla now. Heaven forbid a hockey player would have a personality though.

 

[Mr Jiggyfly]

He's a strong starting goaltender. Somewhere inbetween elite and average. That's close as its going to get until we see him on a non-juggernaut.

We never saw Dryden, Roy or Brodeur on avg teams. In fact, as soon as things got rough for the Habs, Roy whined his way to an ultra stacked team.

People keep conveniently overlooking that Murray was an elite goalie prospect, arguably the best in the world, before he came up. In fact, he was re-writing records down in the A

Murray never even gets a chance to unseat MAF and go on his unreal run, if he wasn’t so dominant in the A. He was called up not because of an injury situation (MAF didn’t go down for another month after he was recalled), but because he was playing such spectacular hockey for WBS, that the org wanted him up immediately.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that an elite goalie prospect is living up to his hype and is now the fastest goalie to 25 playoff wins... ever.

Good for the kid. I just remember some pretty arrogant statements from him before

You mean being honest? For shame...

 

[AvatarAang]

He's been great but I think it's more the whole team elevating their game in the playoffs.

 

[wgknestrick]

Good for the kid. I just remember some pretty arrogant statements from him before

I think you have a tough time discerning between confidence and arrogance.

Confidence is knowing that you are best prepared to succeed at any future task
Arrogance is falsely thinking you are.

 

[Dipsy Doodle]

Patrick Roy? I think he’s moreso the modern day Grant Fuhr.

Gets a lot of offensive support

Doesn’t always dazzle, but doesn’t have to be a superhero because of the team he plays in front of scores enough to give him breathing room, and if he doesn’t get breathing room, he makes the big saves when he has to.

He is the type of goalie that, if his team scores 4 goals, he can give up two goals, maybe three, but never the fourth.

Except unlike Fuhr, his individual numbers are exceptional, which gives lie to the idea that he only plays as well as his team needs him to. In fact, the only time he's faltered has been in this regular season, when there were some significant extenuating circumstances that only stat watchers would discount.

Prior to that, his numbers in the regular season and playoffs the last 2 years had been better than any other goalie save Holtby, who's about even. These playoffs are just getting back to level.

Good for the kid. I just remember some pretty arrogant statements from him before

I've never once heard anything close to this despite regularly seeing people parrot it. Barring some sort of linked evidence, I'm just going to go ahead and say it's somebody blowing innocent comments well out of proportion.

 

[Nadal On Clay]

To be fair, the people I see saying how bad Pens defense is most, are Pens fans when trying to hype a given player on their team. I notice they like to downplay their team when hyping a player of their choosing. Defense and Wingers seem to get that treatment a bit.

We could literally apply the same statement with Oilers fans lol...

 

[Dewey Eye]

We never saw Dryden, Roy or Brodeur on avg teams. In fact, as soon as things got rough for the Habs, Roy whined his way to an ultra stacked team.

People keep conveniently overlooking that Murray was an elite goalie prospect, arguably the best in the world, before he came up. In fact, he was re-writing records down in the A

Murray never even gets a chance to unseat MAF and go on his unreal run, if he wasn’t so dominant in the A. He was called up not because of an injury situation (MAF didn’t go down for another month after he was recalled), but because he was playing such spectacular hockey for WBS, that the org wanted him up immediately.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that an elite goalie prospect is living up to his hype and is now the fastest goalie to 25 playoff wins... ever.



You mean being honest? For shame...

Exactly. here is little blurb from the AHL record book

Longest Shutout Streak — 304:11
Matt Murray, W-B/Scranton (Feb. 8, 2015 – Mar. 8, 2015)

This dude has been nails since he came in to pro hockey.

 

[CanadianPensFan1]

HF boards never ceases to impress.

 

[Evergreen]

It's hard to say. He's certainly proven himself to be a goalie you can win a Cup with, which is really all you need. But he hasn't needed to show any more than that, like being able to steal a round by himself. He has such a talented, experienced and composed team around him that it's hard to gauge his individual ability. If you were to switch him and the Flyers' goalie, you'd get a better sense of what he can do as an individual.

 

[pokey10]

Wouldn't be having this conversation about what a winner he is if Pittsburgh doesn't get Malkin drafting #2 overall in 2004 then hilariously get the #1 pick despite not playing the season and immediately get Crosby in 2005.

Poor Philidelphia drafts #2 overall and gets James van Riemsdyk instead.

A slightly different roll of the dice and Washington's top line features Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin and Pittsburgh is stuck with Sasha Pokulok. Life is funny sometimes.

If's and butt's, cuzzo.

 

[pokey10]

Defense is not something of which to be proud for the Penguins, though.

If it wins us cups, the defense could be road cones for all I care.

 

[Brock Radunske]

He's good...but worse than MAF.

 

[pokey10]

Well, so far!
The Flower has let in 3 goals total!

Touche. Gotta love what MAF is doin over there.

 

[Vancouver Canucks]

Well, so far!
The Flower has let in 3 goals total!

Well, it's that time of the season. Flowers are starting to bloom.

 

[TheBluePenguin]

23 years old

-2 Stanley Cups #1 All Time in win percentage, 2 for 2
-25-10 playoff record #1 All Time win percentage
-1.88 Goals Against #2 All Time for players born after the year 1910
-93% save percentage #3 All Time
-6 Shutouts #24 All time
-Undefeated in playoff series- #1 All Time

-For all the praise of the big 3 or 4 of the Penguins, this guy doesnt get the hype he's earned. For all the hype of Patrick Roy, this guy is beating him in all statistics in the playoffs. Playoff Brick Wall

as much as I love watching Murry play it is absolutely ridiculous to compare him to Roy, and I hate Roy as a person. Roy has over 200 more playoff games played so of course his averages are lower, Murry has played on the best team in the league for less than two complete playoff runs, his stats will go down when the Penguins start to decline. I think it is a disservice to rank a player after two year to an all time great.

 

[NJGoalie]

Oh the irony from someone with some form of "Alexei Yashin" name...

The race for Lemieux was a league wide tank fest. You want to be mad, be mad at half the league that wasn't playoff bound that was literally trying to lose as many games as possible to get Lemieux.

Jagr fell to us, a few teams had the opportunity to get Jagr, they failed.

What else ya got?

Many teams have tanked, some have even tanked so much the draft lottery was created, another tanked so much they had to modify the chances for teams to jump to 1st overall.

Yet, you chose to be mad at the Pens because they drafted well after the 2 superstars and figured out how to properly surround them with talent and coaching.

So it's not quite as simple as saying that teams passed on Jagr and the Pens were there to scoop him up. Jagr was peddling around to the teams in the league that he was not coming over to play for them if they drafted him. He specifically wanted to play for the Pens and in a roundabout way said he would only come over to NA if they were the team that drafted him, because he idolized Mario Lemieux.

I'm not going sour grapes as a Flyers fan but let's call a spade a spade. The Mario luck brought the team the Jagr luck. They are not unrelated and teams didn't pass on Jags for no reason.