Armchair Hockey Scout

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2022-23 edition Ask a direct question about this edition of the book — who, how many, how common, which group more — and it is answered with a table computed on this page from the edition’s index: the season line, height and age, the on-ice percentiles, the grades and the traits read out of every report. Ask for a view on named players — what a comparison comes down to, what makes a man — and you get the book’s reading of their own pages, and only those. The model turns your question into a query and phrases the result, or reads the pages it is handed; it never originates a figure, and an answer carrying a figure that is on neither the table nor the pages is withheld. It does not forecast, and it says so when a question is outside what the book holds.

Tables are computed on this page from the 2022-23 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.
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30

Matt Murray

Toronto Maple Leafs Goaltender

A .9112 across 7,255 shots, and three consecutive seasons beneath .9070 to finish.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2015-16PIT13921252.001355.930
2016-17PIT49321041112.4141450.923
2017-18PIT49271631332.9211423.906
2018-19PIT50291461292.6941594.919
2019-20PIT38201151072.8711055.899
2020-21OTT2710131793.382738.893
2021-22OTT205122603.051640.906
2022-23 so far——————————
Career—24613278226442.77147255.911

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

20 games for Ottawa, 5-12-2, a .9063 save percentage and a 3.05 goals-against, one shutout on 640 shots. Eighty-third overall in 2012 by Pittsburgh — the third round — seven seasons, 246 games.

Twenty games is well short of the twenty-five this book requires before it will place a goaltender in the league distribution, so what follows is described rather than ranked.

The Physical Game

6-5 and 220 pounds, and 28 years old.

Seven seasons and 7,255 career shots at .9112, and the shape of it is a cliff.

The first four years read .9296, .9234, .9065 and .9191. The last three read .8986, .8930 and .9063.

Every one of the first four is above .9060 and two are above .9230. Every one of the last three is below .9070, and the worst of them came across 738 shots.

Twenty games last season is the fewest of his career, and 246 games across seven seasons for a man who was a starter for four of them says the rest.

The Mental Game

Ottawa rated 15th in the league in goaltending at plus-0.4 goals saved above expectation, and the crease also carried Anton Forsberg and Filip Gustavsson. His twenty games were part of a group that came out level.

The skaters in front finished 21st in attempt share and 23rd in chances, which is a poor structure and a partial alibi for a .9063 — and .9063 is his best figure in three years.

He arrives at a club that finished 4th in the league in expected goals against per 60 at even strength and 29th in goaltending.

The Intangibles

Nothing here measures technique, rebound control or how he handles a screen.

What it measures is 7,255 shots at .9112 across seven seasons, with the last three all below .9070 and the total falling from 49 games to 38 to 27 to 20.

Ilya Samsonov is 25 with 2,333 shots at .9023 and a three-year decline. Murray is 28 with 7,255 at .9112 and a three-year decline. A club that gave up 253 goals off the 5th-best chance suppression in hockey has replaced Jack Campbell’s .9140 with those two, and neither career says the number goes up.