Toronto Maple Leafs: The Pros and Cons of the Matt Murray Trade
By Jeremiah Lee
And now the cons and, I’m sad to say, there are a few.
First is Murray’s price, which is luckily 25% less than it would have been, but it is an expensive contract for the Maple Leafs to take.
On top of this, the chances of Murray having a bad start to the season to become derailed by an injury is pretty high. He has been plagued by injuries throughout his career and the last thing the Leafs need is an expensive, fragile, underwhelming goaltender.
Another would be his inability to keep his job on a specific team after 2017. He was replaced by the Penguins, then he was sent to the AHL for a two game stint. I never considered him to be the sole goaltender of the Penguins either given the Stanley Cups being a full joint effort. He would then lose his job to a young Tristan Jarry, who would then lose HIS job to Casey DeSmith due to a lacking glove hand.
Murray would then find himself traded to the Ottawa Senators and his streak of injury-plagued seasons would continue as he would only play 20 games. I don’t consider him to be a dependable, long-term choice in net and the Leafs have to expect the worst and sign another goaltender such as Ilya Samsonov , just in case.
The Toronto Maple Leafs just got out of Petr Mrazek’s contract after a subpar 2021-22 campaign which was ended short due to injury. Now, they have a guy who costs even more than Mrazek did with injury problems. This can either end really well or really bad.
So, here are the cons:
- Injury prone
- Expensive
- Consistency