5:07 pm: The Maple Leafs have officially announced the transaction, also confirming that Murray is set to miss at least four weeks with an adductor injury.
4:41 pm: As reported by TSN’s Chris Johnston, the Toronto Maple Leafs have recalled goalie Erik Kallgren from the AHL. PuckPedia notes that this move implies that Matt Murray has been moved to long-term injured reserve after suffering an apparent groin injury in practice this morning.
If Murray was not injured enough to go on long-term injured reserve, the Maple Leafs would have had to utilize an emergency backup for tonight’s game against the Ottawa Senators. The team remains tight to the salary cap and wouldn’t have had enough salary cap space to recall Kallgren without the additional LTIR relief from Murray’s $4.688MM cap hit.
Kallgren’s availability was also a point of uncertainty throughout the day for the Maple Leafs. The Swedish netminder, who had his 26th birthday yesterday, left the Toronto Marlies’ season opener against the Rochester Americans after a collision with Rochester Americans defenseman Ethan Prow. As Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported earlier today, though, Kallgren was cleared of any injury on the play.
Toronto will now rely heavily on Ilya Samsonov to begin the season, who made 24 saves on 26 shots in his Maple Leafs debut on Thursday against the Washington Capitals. Kallgren will likely be used sparingly as a backup, having amassed an 8-4-1 record but a poor .888 save percentage last season in Toronto.
The soonest Murray will be eligible to return to the lineup is November 8.
As a Sens fan, all I can say to Leaf fans and their management is “I told you so”. It sucks, you never want to see a guy hurt but that’s unfortunately been the trademark of Murray’s tenure in Ottawa, and of his career in hockey as a whole. The Leafs should have never traded for him in the first place but here we are. Exactly where everyone except Kyle Dubai knew we would be at – Murray going on injured reason. The Leafs should have just gone with Samsonov. They would have saved a ton of cap and they could have signed a veteran backup for far less.
So happy Murray used his trade clause to prevent a trade to Buffalo. Thank you Mr. Murray.
The entire hockey world once again says “we told you so” to TOR. Just another excuse for the wonderboy though.
Yeah, everyone saw this coming except Toronto which is just predictable. Chances are that Samsonov will be the same guy he was in Washington; outstanding for stretches and then mediocre to below average for stretches of equal length.
There is still hope for him to turn a corner though, but.. man was this a huge gamble by Toronto. They’re already losing one bet in predictable fashion, so can Samsonov emerge as an elite goalie to save Toronto’s skin or are we going to find out that they rolled snake eyes with a gamble on perhaps the most important position on the team if they seriously want to get out of the first round? Samsonov has never done it.
I don’t really get why you’d choose the goalie position to roll the dice with such high stakes and high risk when Toronto is under tremendous pressure to do something when it really matters in the postseason.