MURRAY STANDS TALL FOR PENS IN FIRST START OF THIS PLAYOFF RUN
Matt Murray responded the way the Pittsburgh hoped Friday, but boy, oh, boy, did the Ottawa Senators ever make life easy for the Penguins goaltender.
Receiving his first start in six weeks, after Penguins coach Mike Sullivan made the somewhat controversial decision to bench Marc-Andre Fleury, Murray had his moments, stopping 24 of 26 shots, including a pad stop off Erik Karlsson with seven seconds remaining.
The Senators did finish strong, bringing the Canadian Tire Centre crowd to its feet after Tom Pyatt’s goal narrowed the gap to 3-2 with 5:01 remaining. They also began the game the right way, attacking the Penguins’ net and forcing Murray into several big stops in the opening minutes.
But what about the mushy middle of the game?
Where was the traffic, the effort to get in the eyes of the 6-4, 178-pound netminder in the first 50 minutes?
Where was the intensity on a miserable power play which only served to give momentum to the Penguins?
How could the Senators not take better advantage of a Penguins blue line that was down to five defencemen for most of the night?
The Senators had a chance to make a rusty goaltender secondguess himself, to send the Penguins back to Pittsburgh on the ropes, down 3-1.
Instead, it’s now a best-ofthree series and Murray, who backstopped the Penguins to their Stanley Cup last spring, has his feet wet in post-season action again.
At the outset, Murray stood tall to make back-to-back pad stops off the snake-bitten Viktor Stalberg two minutes into the game. Five minutes later, he performed the splits to make a sharp right pad save off Derick Brassard.
It was a night where the Penguins got the same kind of bounces the Senators received in Game 3, but they earned those breaks, too.
By the time Clarke MacArthur finally got a puck past Murray, a nifty deflection of a Bobby Ryan pass with 1:38 left in the second period, the Senators were trying to climb out of a 3-0 hole.
Murray, who turns 23 next Friday, found his groove, making Sullivan look smart for making the goalie flip.
Murray has all the necessary credentials to put a spark into the Penguins, a wonderkid last spring as he won 15 of 16 playoff games to lead the Penguins to their 2016 Stanley Cup.
After a training camp injury hiccup — prompting the Penguins to acquire Mike Condon off waivers from Montreal for his 20 minutes of action in Pittsburgh — Murray quickly returned to his elite form from his Stanley Cup run last spring.
He went 32-10-4, with a 2.41 goals-against average and .923 save percentage during the regular season, pushing Fleury into the background — except when his name popped up in rumours before the trade deadline or as a potential netminder for the expansion Vegas Golden Knights.
While the Fleury-Murray debate was raging Thursday, Murray put a quick end to questions about rust being any kind of issue.
“You don’t need to play all the time to be good. You have to play like you haven’t missed a beat, with no hesitation,” he said.
For all the gaudy Murray numbers, there was some sentiment for the veteran Fleury within the Penguins dressing room, recognizing just how much he has done for the franchise in the past month and throughout his career.
After Murray went down with his lower body injury in the warm-up before Game 1 against Columbus, the Flower bloomed, delivering nine wins against six losses.
Before making the call, Sullivan surely weighed the following numbers: in five starts after losses earlier in the 2017 playoffs, Fleury was 4-1, with a 1.80 goals-against average, .946 save percentage and two shutouts.
Barring some strange new wrinkle, though, Fleury’s career with the Penguins may well have come to an end when Zack Smith circled around the net and tucked the puck behind him with seven minutes left in the first period Wednesday.
There was no controversy at the other end of the rink, of course.
Ever since Condon saw his only action of the playoffs for the Senators, mop-up duty in the third period of a 4-1 loss to New York in Game 4 of the second round, Craig Anderson has rediscovered his zone.
The inconsistent, shaky Anderson we saw in the first round and a half of the playoffs has been replaced by a solid-as-a-rock netminder.
In the four games before Friday, he had allowed only five goals on 122 shots, a .961 save percentage. With only three goals in three games, one each from Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Phil Kessel, the Penguins stars and the supporting cast were shaking their heads in frustration, fully believing they were due a bounce or two.
As it turns out, the puck was rolling — and hopping, and sliding through slush on terrible ice — their way.
While the Senators were failing to take advantage of their power play chances, the Penguins made the most of what they got.
Anderson had a strong first period. Until, that is, he came off the post early on a Penguins 3-on-2 rush with 46 seconds left, allowing Olli Maatta to beat him short side.
Crosby padded the lead to 2-0 on a power play, given two cracks at a loose puck in the crease. The man advantage came after Jean-Gabriel Pageau punched Crosby, taking exception to the Penguins captain poking at a puck Anderson had frozen. (If you’ve watched any playoff hockey, you know the men in stripes almost always turn a blind eye to calling a penalty in that situation).
There’s no fault for Anderson on the Penguins’ third goal. Brian Dumoulin’s point shot deflected directly off Dion Phaneuf’s skate into the net.
As it turns out, it was a pivotal goal. Climbing back from a threegoal deficit, against a Stanley Cup champion goaltender, was just too big of a hole.