It’s time to air some grievances…

Well, there’s really only one I think that deserves to be addressed right now if we are going to ignore the whole injury thing that has plagued the Penguins this year. Matt Murray, what the hell?

Goaltending is not an easy position to up your prediction percentage on. There are lots of twists and turns and it spans all ages and ability. I still think Matt Murray’s performance portfolio this year is weird even for the position. He’s been terrible and it comes on the back of a tremendous season last year. There was nothing to suggest he would be the third best goalie in the organization in 2019-20, which is what he is right now.

He started slow last year, but it was pretty obvious he was dealing with a lower body injury and when the team shut him down for a few weeks he came back on fire and was one of the best players at his position from December to the end of the year. What’s the excuse for this year? Jarry is a threat? Murray played at a high level when Marc-Andre Fleury was a legitimate threat so that’s going to be a tough sell for me to buy in to. Is he hurt? I think both team and player would have learned the lesson from last year and get him right. Did he forget how to play the position? That seems extreme. I have no idea why he stinks this year, but he does.

There are 53 goalies who have played 500 minutes at 5v5 this year and here is how Murray is doing in them.

5v5 SV%: 0.897 (50)
5v5 HDSV%: 0.810 (37)
5v5 Goals saved above average: -9.89 (50)

Absolutely brutal and when you look at last year it really shows the drop off

5v5 SV%: 0.934 (7)
5v5 HDSV%: 0.844 (17)
5v5 Goals saved above average: 18.03 (2)

I did up the minimum minutes to 1,000 to account for the second half of the season.

He’s a polar opposite goaltender, especially so in goals saved above average. Last year he was outperforming the workload he was given and this year he is comically underperforming. He only has nine quality starts out of 22 so far this year with three coming since November out of 12. Only 41% of his starts have been quality. Even though this isn’t an end all be all stat I do think it illustrates how Murray has come up short, especially since November. For comparison sake Jarry has 11 quality starts out of 16 this season.

Per Rob Vollman:
*In order to record a Quality Start, the starting goalie must stop at least a league average number of shots (typically 91.3% prior to 2009-10, and 91.7% since), or play at least as well as a replacement-level goalie (88.5%) while allowing two goals or fewer*

So where do things go from here? In somewhat of a stroke of luck the Penguins have one of the best goaltenders in the league in Tristan Jarry so it isn’t a situation where the team has to panic about anything, at least for as long as Jarry is league average or better. Here are Jarry’s numbers for this year.

5v5 SV%: 0.953 (1)
5v5 HDSV%: 0.843 (18)
5v5 Goals saved above average: 12.54 (2)

Matt Murray is losing money with his play so far this season. Murray is an RFA and even though we see more RFA’s cashing in these days they are usually coming off of high caliber production years. If this trend continues Murray would not have that leverage. His trade value is nowhere near where it once was, but then again what is a goaltender’s trade value? It’s a weird positon to peg value in that regard. I think the Penguins have an obvious choice with Matt Murray and they control all of the leverage at this point. I think if things continue down this path they sit tight and after the season elect for team initiated arbitration.

This means whatever the arbitrator decides the team has to accept. Given that he is an RFA coming off of what will probably be a poor season the money will be manageable (~5M?) and the term would only be for one or two years. There would be no long term goalie contract which carries obvious risk to cripple the team. The one or two year extension would buy more time and a larger sample to make a more educated decision. You also buy Jarry more time to see if this is a flash in the pan kind of thing or if he can sustain league average or better. It’s been no secret over the past six years or so of writing this blog that I am not a huge fan of investing heavily into goaltending. The Penguins shouldn’t and don’t have to yet.

So yeah, Matt Murray you need to get you know what together, but Penguins you don’t have to do anything drastic, either. Stay the course and let the chips fall as they may because the arbitration option is always in your back pocket.

Thanks for reading!

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