Murray has brought a stabilizing presence - hands down! I'd like to resurrect the argument that this was a bad signing since I'm on record for being delighted with the acquisition.
All Hail the Midnight Express
So how many Fenwicks does he get for that? Math nerds may have impacted a boring sport like baseball that needs all the help it can get, but it ain't gonna work in hockey. It's a team sport...too many team variables.
Best advanced stat NHLer ever? A fellow named Fenwick Corsi....grandfather of one-time NHL backup goalie Jim Corsi....played rover for the Seattle Metropolitans..his stats were so advanced that you can't find mention of him anywhere.
So how many Fenwicks does he get for that? Math nerds may have impacted a boring sport like baseball that needs all the help it can get, but it ain't gonna work in hockey. It's a team sport...too many team variables.
Best advanced stat NHLer ever? A fellow named Fenwick Corsi....grandfather of one-time NHL backup goalie Jim Corsi....played rover for the Seattle Metropolitans..his stats were so advanced that you can't find mention of him anywhere.
Its much better a Murray type guy for the 3rd pairing than another smurf or non-physical guy. With Diaz, you need size. Heck, even Bouillon/Murray would be handy as 3rd pair vs some of the teams in the division.
Big fan of Murray.
Always been a fan of the guy. It's funny to see guys overhere saying good thing about Murray when they were bashing him ealier (too slow, too old, yada, yada).
Big fan of Murray.
Always been a fan of the guy. It's funny to see guys overhere saying good thing about Murray when they were bashing him ealier (too slow, too old, yada, yada).
So how many Fenwicks does he get for that? Math nerds may have impacted a boring sport like baseball that needs all the help it can get, but it ain't gonna work in hockey. It's a team sport...too many team variables.
What if the Habs had signed a Diaz/Spacek (another no-contact) type Dman instead of Murray? People would be complaining about lack of size, this and that.
Now, they got someone, a 6th Dman, who's got size. Now some will complain the Habs arent as effective on offense when he's on the ice compared to when the 1st pairing is?
Murray will be handy on the 3rd pairing vs a quite a few teams in the division Habs are in.
It's almost as if a community of fans are made up of different people with different opinions. Shocker.
It's almost as if a community of fans are made up of different people with different opinions. Shocker.
But expecting a 6th Dman, signed for cheap, who's on the downside of his carrer, to be effective all-around?
Its like complaining that White isnt as effective on the offense as Plekanec is.
This is exactly where fancystats are useful: to help us look past the eye-popping hits that stick to the mind, and look at whether a guy's actually being effective where it matters. And to me, a defensive defenseman's role is to prevent goals against, which is best done by preventing scoring chances.
There's a difference between expecting an NHL defenseman to be effective and expecting him to not be a black hole.
this is not a question of defense vs. offense. It's a question of being good enough in your own zone to allow your other players to push the puck in the other direction. For all his strength and hitting, Murray did not help the habs at all last night. They were caught in their own zone quite a bit with him on the ice and had a disproportionately high amount of scoring chances against, and it's not like he was being matched against top opposition, either. He also wasn't tired from being overworked. The only legitimate excuse is that he's still recovering from his injury.
You don't need advanced stats to see that Murray wasn't effective last night. Just eyeballs.
You're expecting Murray, who missed time because of an injury, missed TC, was never an offensive/mobile Dman, is gonna comeback and light it up? Gill surely wasnt the cutest Dman to watch. he was effective in the role he had tho.
Time will tell if Murray can fill a role efficiently on the 3rd pair. His 2 first games, while not being great, werent as bad as we could've expected. Remember Gill start of seaons? Those were awful. Murray surely looked better than that.