For the last several weeks, Maple Leafs goaltender Matt Murray has been skating with the team as he works his way back from bilateral hip surgery performed back in October. He’s now taking the next step in the rehab process as the team announced (Twitter link) that they’ve assigned Murray to AHL Toronto on an LTI Conditioning Loan.
At the time Murray had the surgery, the expected recovery timeline was six to eight months and it appears the 29-year-old will be on the shorter end of that. Last season, Murray was limited to just 26 games where he posted a 3.01 GAA and a .903 SV% and didn’t play at all in the playoffs after suffering a late-season concussion; he was relegated to third-string status upon his return.
That had the veteran as a speculative buyout candidate but the hip injury would have taken that option off the table had the team tried to pursue it. Instead, they elected to do with surgery, delaying that procedure until the start of the season which helped the Maple Leafs from a salary cap perspective as they were able to spend his $4.6875MM AAV in full on replacement players rather than having to keep it available for a midseason return.
With this being an LTI loan, there are some more stringent rules than a typical conditioning assignment. Murray can be with the Marlies for up to three games and six days and if he needs more time, the team can request a one-time two-game extension. That should be ample time to assess if Murray has indeed fully recovered and the original allotment is enough to get through the end of the regular season with him still on LTIR, removing any salary cap concerns.
Even if Murray does well in that stint, it would be surprising to see him see any action with the Maple Leafs in the postseason who are set with Ilya Samsonov and Joseph Woll as their tandem with veteran Martin Jones waiting in the wings as well. But a decent showing there could certainly help his cause as he’ll test unrestricted free agency for the first time this summer.
Matt’s main conditioning exercise will be knocking the net off its moorings, but doing so without taking a penalty this time.
Well this article just said what the league knew all yr, Leafs are circumventing the CAP by not having surgery on a player for 3 months after putting him onto LTIR (because he needed surgery) just so that he could not be recovered and healthy before the season ended, as they did not want to have to activate or play him!
Megastar the league penalty for circumventing the CAP?
Oh ya it’s the leafs – they have the League approved “island” to send these players so their cap hits disappear
You can’t force a player to get surgery if/when he doesn’t want to.
Don’t forget to get over to the Vegas forum to do the same complaint. This stuff was collectively bargained. Your whining about circumvention says that don’t know this.