The 2018-19 season will be the last year the Penguins have Matt Murray under contract for a very team friendly 3.75M. He heads into his fifth NHL season and the fourth as a full-time starter. For most of his career he has been a consistently good player with some excellent stretches of play. Like any goalie he has been susceptible to stretches of poor play as well, namely his 2017-18 season.
The Penguins success, like every team, hinges on what happens in between the pipes. League average or better goaltending is a good recipe for league average or better teams to have a really successful season. Bad goaltending can tank the best of teams and great goaltending can prop up mediocre to bad teams. What does Matt Murray have in store for the Penguins this year?
When we look back at Matt Murray's history as a goaltender in the league it looks like this
A large chunk of it hovers near the .920 mark which makes sense. His career save percentage is .917 in all situations. His high-danger save percentage in all-situations the past three seasons is .842. Only Corey Crawford, Sergei Bobrovsky, and Ben Bishop have been better. I feel like the high-danger save percentage speaks to goaltender talent more than the overall figure. When the going gets tough who can bail you out more often than not. Murray has been great in this regard.
Murray's track record isn't spotless. The horrible looking drop on the chart is the time period where his mediocre (at best) 2017-18 season starts to the blend with the first two months of the 2018-19 season. It was a stretch of bad goaltending. The good news is the start to the 2018-19 season had what appears to be a reasonable explanation. Murray was dealing with a lower body injury which sapped his ability to move and push off at the levels necessary for an NHL goaltender. Murray was held out for a month (Nov 17-Dec 15) and when he came back he was as good as new.
Casey DeSmith was good in his own right last year. He had to play 36 games while the team navigated Murray's poor play/injury. DeSmith had a .929 5v5 save percentage which was 13th best among goalies who played 1,500 minutes. His .826 high-danger save percentage was 12th best league wide.
When you look at both Murray and DeSmith they were stopping pucks at above the expected rate for a league average goaltender as evidence of their dSv%
First column is what each goalie actually did. Middle column is how the league average goalie would have done on a similar workload. Third column shows the difference. In the case of both Penguins goaltender they did an admirable job in 2018-19. They tied for eighth best in the league.
Goalies are a pain in the ass to predict, but the Penguins are in as good of a spot as any team in the league with their duo heading into the 2019-20 season. When you consider both players combine for a 5M cap hit it makes it even better. it also makes it frustrating to think about how those savings were spent because they are potentially going away next year if the Penguins elect to sign Murray to a huge deal.
Thanks for reading!