The Pittsburgh Penguins announced that they have signed goaltender Matt Murray to a three year contract extension. The deal will carry a cap hit of $3.75MM and will commence in the 2017-18 season.
Murray made an immediate impact last season with the Penguins. He took over as Marc-Andre Fleury’s backup midseason and when Fleury was injured going in to the playoffs, Murray assumed the #1 job early in the first round and never looked back. In 13 regular season games, he posted a 9-2-1 record with a 2.00 GAA and a .930 SV% and put up similar results in 21 postseason contests, going 15-6 with a 2.08 GAA and a .923 SV%.
His strong play earned Murray a spot on Team North America at the World Cup of Hockey. However, he broke his hand and missed the majority of the tournament and as a result, has yet to play this season. He skated on Wednesday for the first time since the injury and is likely a couple of weeks away from returning to game action. In the meantime, waiver acquisition Mike Condon will continue to back up Fleury.
Moving forward, the Penguins have a lot of money tied up in their goalies as Fleury carries a cap hit of $5.75MM for two more seasons after this one. They can only protect one goalie in the upcoming expansion draft and Fleury has a no-move clause so this will be a situation to closely follow moving forward. With the contract, Pittsburgh now has just over $60MM committed to 14 players for next season.
Fleury will be gone by the New Year.
Fleury to Philly. That would be funny.
With the expansion draft only allowing you to protect one goalie you can kiss Fleury good bye.
The Penguins are too smart for that. They’ll see how they can get the most value. They will probably trade Fleury to the highest bidder before the trade deadline and protect Murray. I don’t know the details of the expansion crap, but no way they’re just letting Fleury go lol. But even if they did, they’re still incredible so they would be just fine without him.