On the Pittsburgh Penguins and Matt Murray …
A year ago Pittsburgh Penguins goaltender Matt Murray was just beginning his 2nd full season as a pro with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.
Fast forward 12 months and the 22-year-old is a Stanley Cup winner with 33 NHL games under his belt (playoffs included) and now a three-year, $11,250,000 contract ($3.75M per) in his back pocket.
While giving that kind of money to a player with as little NHL experience as Murray seems like it could be a risky proposition, but I think Penguins GM Jim Rutherford was smart to get Murray locked up sooner than later.
Murray was the best goaltender in the league in his final season in junior. He was the best goaltender in the league his rookie season in the AHL, and he was the best goaltender in the league last year before he was recalled … and from that point on performed better than any NHL goaltender.
Again, the sample size isn’t large in the NHL, but he has consistently posted fantastic numbers everywhere he has played.
Even if he’s not entirely as good as he has shown thus far, he is likely to be well underpaid. $3.75 million would be the 28th highest cap hit among NHL goaltenders.
Obviously the Penguins expect him to be very good, and it’s likely he will be, but if Murray becomes even an average starter the Penguins, will be getting more than they’re paying for; and there’s no reason to believe he isn’t capable of that.
This is a smart signing for the Penguins.
Another long year for the Buffalo Sabres?
Over the last few years the Buffalo Sabres, largely by design, have consistently been at or near the bottom of the standings when all was said and done.
While GM Tim Murray actively tried to improve the team’s roster over the off-season (he added Kyle Okposo and Dmitry Kulikov to the young core that was in place), early signs suggest the Sabres will once again be among the league’s worst teams.
Despite a very soft schedule to date – they have played three non-playoff teams from 2015-16, one of which (Montreal) was missing their best player – the Sabres have one win through three games and have posted some horrifying underlying numbers.
At 5 v 5 the Sabres have been out attempted 127-87 (40.65 Corsi For%) and out chanced 55-36 (39.56 Scoring Chance For%).
I’ll be the first to admit the loss of Jack Eichel hurts the Sabres a lot. Losing Evander Kane, while his perceived value is higher than his on-ice value, hurts as well. In saying that, the team didn’t have nearly enough depth to begin with.
Johan Larsson (39 points in 145 NHL games) has logged more 5 v 5 minutes than any forward on the roster, while Derek Grant (three points in 43 NHL games) and Brian Gionta (35 points or less in consecutive years) have also played fairly prominent roles.
The Sabres are also asking for serious trouble pairing Josh Gorges (28.38CF% through three games) with the best defenseman on their roster in Rasmus Ristolainen.
With Ryan O’Reilly, Sam Reinhart, Eichel and co. Buffalo has a good core group of players, but they haven’t done nearly enough to surround them with quality depth (see above).
As a result the team has been caved in during the first few games of the season and, while their underlying numbers are bound to improve a little bit, history suggests that’s unlikely to change much moving forward.
This is shaping up to be another long year in Buffalo.
Written by Todd Cordell (@ToddCordell)
