SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Matt Murray blew it.
The Penguins can't say it, not even after he allowed the Sharks to tie on Joel Ward's shot from San Francisco, not even after he badly backed off Joonas Donskoi's overtime goal, not even after those cost him and his teammates a 3-2 loss Saturday night in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final and, of course, a chance to take a stranglehold on the series.
There's no way they could say it. Nor should they. That would be nuts at this stage.
And to their inestimable credit, they didn't.
"I thought Matt was solid," Mike Sullivan said.
"He was solid," Sidney Crosby said.
There was a bunch more, too. Solid this, solid that.
But that's OK, because I can and will say it yet again: Murray blew it.
Sorry, but when a team is protecting a one-goal lead with 11 minutes left and a chance to punch out an opponent in the championship round, and that team just kills off all but one second of a double-minor penalty, and all 19 of that team's skaters are caked in bruises from 36 total blocked shots, and that team would wind up with a 42-26 edge in shots that includes 22-11 in the third period and overtime ... there's no way this can happen:
Ow.
"I just had a transition rush, three-on-two," Ward explained. "I was going to hold on to it for a split second, kind of saw a lane, buried the head and took a slapper. Fortunate to go in."
Fortunate, indeed.
Go ahead and fault Kris Letang and Crosby for being trapped up ice while short-handed. Crosby did that himself, conceding he'd have simply dumped the puck deep into the San Jose zone on his approach had he realized Nick Bonino hadn't yet escaped the box.
All three are long-distance spectators when Ward cranks up inside the Pittsburgh blue line:
Or, if you're doing this right, simply accept that Murray has to stop this shot from this distance from this player 1,000 times out of 1,000:
That's what Murray accepted. Almost.
“Yeah, that was a bit of a weird one,” he said. “It kind of dipped a little bit at the last second and I just waved at it and missed it. Not a good goal by any means, but I thought I made a couple of good saves after that.”
A couple good saves after that?
Well, Murray's got nothing more to gain from ripping himself apart than his teammates do, so what he says publicly shouldn't mean much.
But here again, I can and will say it, and I'll paraphrase the timeless Tom Barrasso quote: It's not the saves you make. It's the goals you give up.
Old No. 35 was anything but an admirable sort, but the wisdom in that was always indisputable: No one cares how wonderful the saves are because it's not like those count extra. All that matters is what's conceded. And what Murray conceded on these goals was collectively lousy.
Donskoi's winner might actually have been the lousier of the two:
This doesn't even require a second glance.
Ian Cole is draped all over his man after a hard San Jose forecheck took the puck from him. Justin Schultz is protecting the opposite post as he should. And Evgeni Malkin's diligent backcheck on Donskoi actually puts the Penguins in the bonus round in terms of coverage. Even for the moment Malkin loses track, it's because he lost sight of the puck.
The only one not covering properly is Murray as it relates to his net. His skates are so far back that one actually appears to be over the goal line, and his right pad inexplicably drops to touch the ice, leaving Donskoi pretty much his pick of where to shoot.
Donskoi had little to offer when asked what he saw.
"I don't know. I just shot the puck. I was happy it went in."
He had every reason to be. There aren't many technical flaws to Murray's game, but his tendency to stay too deep in the crease, while offering an extra millisecond to read shots, occasionally bites him. And add to that a tendency to slip up -- not always but sometimes -- when moving side to side as the puck is behind the net.
Remember Justin Williams' goal in Game 6 for the Capitals?
Here's guessing you'll see the Sharks try a lot more of those now.
Murray's version of this one wasn't exactly self-eviscerating, either.
“The puck either rolled or it hit something," he said, "and it just went off the side of my head and just snuck by."
His head was back against the crossbar. That's why it went off his head. If he were positioned properly, that puck would have struck him in the Golden Triangle.
The Penguins dominated overtime, outshooting San Jose, 9-4, and nearly winning twice, but Martin Jones, who made 40 saves to Murray's 23, aggressively took away angles and forced Bonino and Malkin wide.
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All right, angry yet?
Disappointed that anyone could bury Murray like this after a single dud when he's been such a stud all through the playoffs?
Ha! Well, that's fine, because this is where I'm about to flip this entire dialogue 180 degrees and point out why Murray being primarily to blame for Game 3 might actually have represented the brightest possible outcome for the Penguins, aside from, you know, winning the thing.
For one, everything that we've witnessed about Murray to date, from Wilkes-Barre to New York to Washington to Tampa and beyond, would mightily suggest he'll be just fine. In those moments he's struggled, even within the span of the games themselves, he's shrugged it off and righted himself in a hurry.
It says right here he'll do that again.
Infinitely more important, the kid says it, too, and with conviction:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1atDF_Vu_VM
For another, the Penguins really did have a decent Game 3 otherwise.
I sure hope you caught that one line from Murray because it's critically important: "I think we outplayed them again today. I think we were the better team. I really liked our game all around. I think we’re in a good spot here heading forward.”
He's right on all counts.
In this game, Crosby again rose to a riveting level. The Malkin line continued to make strides, controlling play far more often than not. The HBK Line, though trapped a bit too often, kept generating speed. The Matt Cullen line had its finest showing of the Final. All of the defensemen except Letang, whose head was way up in the clouds from the opening draw, fared well. Lovejoy might have had the game of his life.
And in a general sense, any notion that the Sharks would come home and rediscover themselves by going rabid along with the crowd never materialized. The Penguins opened with a 10-2 edge in shots and, aside from a few turnovers and misfires-turned-icings they'll address as easily as they have in the past, they kept on churning. In fact, there was ample sentiment afterward that their opponent was the one wearing down the deeper this went.
So if the greatest variable here was that their single most reliable performer in these playoffs would lay an egg for one evening ... man, that's solid.
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