For all the chaos unfolding around him, Matt Murray just doesn’t seem to flinch.
Not when Filip Forsberg is bearing down on him in a 2-on-1. Not when Calle Jarnkrok has a wide-open net after a scramble in the crease.
Not even when the Predators pepper him with seven shots in the final 34 seconds of the first period.
Murray finished with 37 saves in the Penguins’ 4-1 Game 2 win Wednesday night, allowing his teammates to once again sort through their offensive issues until they finally broke through in the third period.
“He’s been so good,” center Matt Cullen said. “He’s so calm and poised back there. He never seems to be rattled or scrambling. He’s just a big body playing some really good hockey for us right now.”
Murray’s long, lanky frame may be what physically allows him to make some of the saves he does, but it’s his mindset that makes him the elite goalie that he is.
Even throughout the ups and downs of a Stanley Cup final game, his thought process doesn’t change: Stop the next shot that comes his way.
“I just try to do my job, just try to stop the puck,” Murray said. “Like I always say, for me personally, it doesn’t matter if the play’s in our end, whether we’re getting outshot, we’re outshooting them. We’re up, we’re down, my job doesn’t change.”
Murray admitted he thought he “wasn’t great” in the Penguins’ 5-3 victory in Game 1 of the final. But, just like within each game, he didn’t allow one subpar performance to bleed into the next one.
Just like when he allowed his lone goal Wednesday night, on a dynamic play from Nashville winger Pontus Aberg, he responded by keeping the Predators off the board as they pushed for the rest of the period.
“He never gets rattled,” defenseman Ian Cole said. “A goal goes in and he can play the exact same way right after that, which is hard for any goalie to do, but especially one that’s still really quite young. He’s mature beyond his years, and I think the guys feed off that calmness and that confidence that he has.”
Murray may be young, but he also has plenty of experience. He just turned 23 last week, but Wednesday night marked his 27th career postseason game. His six wins in the Stanley Cup final are tied with teammate Marc-Andre Fleury for second-most in franchise history, and he needs just one more to equal Tom Barrasso for the top spot.
“He’s the same off the ice as he is on,” winger Scott Wilson said. “He’s super calm, and it’s almost a given that he’s going to make a save when someone gets a chance.”
The Predators had plenty of chances Wednesday night, but Murray turned nearly all of them aside.
During that stretch at the end of the first, he stopped Aberg and Forsberg back-to-back, keeping the game tied, 1-1, heading into the first intermission.
“You never want to allow anything in the last little bit of a period, you never want to give them the momentum going into the intermission,” Murray said. “The end of each period I think is a big point in any game, but we were able to weather that storm and kind of go from there.”
The save that stuck with teammate Chris Kunitz after the game was the one he made on Calle Jarnkrok earlier in the period, sprawled on the ice but getting his glove up just enough to deflect Jarnkrok’s shot. He got back in position in time to stop Mattias Ekholm’s rebound, too.
“Made huge, huge saves at key times in this game for us,” Kunitz said. “Specifically one down low on his pad that he kept close, got the rebound and covered it up, even with them crashing the net. He’s been phenomenal. In the times that we haven’t controlled play, he’s been our best player out there in keeping them off the board.”
Eventually, the Penguins’ offensive players picked up their end of the bargain, taking some pressure off Murray with a three-goal third period. Not like it mattered to him.
“It honestly doesn’t change my job whatsoever,” he said. “I don’t have any control over how many goals we score. I just have full belief in this team. That being said, my job is to stop the puck, so that’s where my mindset stays.”
Sam Werner: swerner@post-gazette.com and Twitter @SWernerPG
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First Published: June 1, 2017, 10:00 a.m.
