Penguins Matt Murray Fact Check

“Just the facts ma’am“, I can still hear that monotone, deadpan voice of Sgt Joe Friday, aka Jack Webb, from the TV series Dragnet echo those words. Well, actually, apparently that memory is a culturally induced auditory illusion, a memory implant. Although I never back checked this assertion there are those who say that quote is one of those misquotes propagated over the years ala the child’s game telephone with the altered quote becoming ingrained in our collective memory, similar to Rick Blaine/Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca saying “Play it again Sam“.

Bogart‘s character actually simply says “Play it Sam“, that is all. (I am a Bogart fan so I have been well aware of this misquote)

Although I did watch Dragnet, I was very young when it was first on and the reruns have ran far less frequently than I Love Lucy, so I can’t know for sure if this is a misquote. I do remember and verified that Friday did once say “All we know are the facts, ma’am“.

Why such a long lead in, you may well ask?
Well, opinion and misinformation seems to be clouding the Matt Murray narrative and I chose to snoop out the alleged facts of Matt Murray.

Myth 1 Murray is playing badly.

There are those that say Matt Murray is having a bad season. The facts say he started the season off bad. He was 4-5-1 in 11 Games with pathetic 0.877 Save Percentage (Sv%) and a bloated 4.08 Goals Against Average (GAA), which had him ranked 65th in Sv% and 66th in GAA among the 75 goalies that had played through the first couple of months of the season.

Matt Murray has since improved his season record to 17-9-1 (35 of a possible 54 points, 0.648 Pnts%) in 28 games, boosted his Sv% to 0.916 and shaved his GAA to 2.82. Murray’s 17 wins is good enough for 17th place among goalies that have played at least 14 games (half as many as Murray). Murray’s 0.916 Sv% lifts the Penguin back stop to 14th among his peers and his 2.82 GAA lands him at 27th place. Wins and GAA are consider more of a cross-over stat where the full team can influence, while Sv% is used more as the normalizing stat to just look at the Goalies skill.

Murray made this dramatic improvement by posting an 11-2-0 record with a 0.934 Sv% and 2.14 GAA since coming back from an injury on December 1st. Murray’s 11 wins ties him for 3rd place. His 0.934 Sv% puts him in 8th place regardless of games played. Limiting the field to just Goalies who have played 5 games or more and Murray is in 5th place. His 2.14 GAA is good enough for all Goalies regardless of games played and 8th among Goalies playing at least 5 games.

I am not going to throw my opinion in here. You, gentle reader, can determine if an 11-2-0 record with a Sv% of 0.934 is good or bad. I won’t argue with you, either way.

As a point of reference I would like to show you these other facts. Former Penguin and Goalie whose name has been talked about, at least by some, as a trophy nominee, Marc-Andre Fleury has an overall record of 29-18-4 (62 of 102 possible points or 0.608), 0.908 Sv% and a 2.61 GAA.

Myth 2, Mike Sullivan is protecting Murray by playing him against weak competition.

Prior to last nights games the league average for Pnts % was 0.553. When averaging the Pnts% for teams that goalies played against the competition Casey DeSmith faced was 0.526 or 0.027 below the League average. Former Penguin Fleury’s competition also has been below the League average at 0.536 (-0.017). Matt Murray on the other hand has faced competition above the Pnts% of the league average 0.571 (+0.018).

Bad offenses with great goaltending can win games, so looking at the Pnts% really may not be all that revealing. Those that would flip the original like in the Telephone Game may try and argue that is the case for Murray here. However turning to look at the offenses faced by Goalies we find;

Shots faced

The League average for Shot per Game was 31.1 DeSmith has faced teams that have taken less shots 30.6. Fleury has faced teams that have equaled the League average and Murray has faced team that take more shots 31.3.

Quality of shooters faced;

The League average for Shooting Percentage was 0.097. DeSmith and Fleury have both faced shooters below the League average (0.096) while Matt Murray has faced shooters above the League average (0.099)

Looking at these facts, again I leave it to you gentle readers, do the facts support the contention of those that want to deride Matt Murray as facing weak competition?

Matt Murray is physically fragile

Statistics do say Murray has missed games several times due to injury but to say he is fragile is still opinion. Murray may very well be fragile but all that can be said when players miss games is that they have missed games; that is all the facts say.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to look at the league average for games missed by goalies due to injury and where Murray falls on that continuum to include here. At some point I will look into this, but I just wanted to get this much written.

I would also like to see if anyone charts number of times a Goalie gets hit by opposing players and the speed quality of those hits so we can better understand whether or not Murray is fragile or the team exposes him to far greater risk than other teams expose their goalies.

Who knows what the rest of the season will look like but at least for now, these are all the facts we know.