COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Matt Murray turned over his right wrist to the underside. It had still been bandaged, as is the precautionary case for everyone in his profession, so I couldn't gauge if there'd been any puck damage.
But yeah, a puck did hit there. Beneath the blocker.
And on the shaft of his stick.
And in other more common locations for a goaltender.
"Make the save," he'd say to me upon turning that wrist back over. "Whatever it takes, make the save."
These Penguins aren't perfect, as played out again Saturday night at Nationwide Arena. They were blitzkrieged early by the Blue Jackets and wound up actually losing to those guys, 4-1, for the first time in nine meetings. A bunch of mistakes were made. A bunch of matters will need to be addressed by, oh, 7:38 p.m. Sunday, before facing the sizzling Bruins at PPG Paints Arena.
But here's what, from this perspective, ought to outlive this weekend whichever way this turns out: This is championship-level goaltending we're witnessing.
"Amazing," was Jared McCann's term, and he was done.
"Unreal," came Erik Gudbranson, and he was far from done. "As I guy who's playing in front of him, I can't tell you what kind of faith I've got in him. When a goalie can bail you out like that, the way he did in this game, it's huge for a playoff push and ..."
He shook his head.
" ... and you're disappointed you can't get him the win when he plays that well."
No doubt. The Penguins' three-game winning streak and six-game points streak were both stunted. They stayed stuck at seventh in the East, separated by a single win from the Canadiens on the periphery. And, just for fun, they might well have squandered a potential delicacy in dealing John Tortorella and the eighth-place Blue Jackets one whale of a body blow to their own chances.
As it was, they'll have to settle for this:
Wait, no, they won't have to settle for that, because then there was this in the second period:
Of the first, on Boone Jenner, shortly following Jenner's icebreaker from a similar spot, Murray recalled, "Yeah, I was just trying to make the next save. They're a team that comes out hard, and you've got to give them credit: They threw a lot of pucks at the net, got a lot of chances. So I was just trying to weather the storm, I guess."
Of the second, on a mortified Markus Nutivaraa, seemingly shooting from beach to ocean, Murray recalled, "It’s tough, I guess. Wide-open shot and wide-open pass back door, you've got to play the shot first, so that’s what I tried to do. And they make a nice play and you get desperate sometimes."
I've covered the NHL for a quarter-century. I can't count many occasions where I saw something live that I didn't fully comprehend even if I'd seen it clearly. That happened twice on this one night.
And on another night, we'd have been glowing about this stirringly aggressive approach a little later to engulf Artemi Panarin, one of the game's more gifted finishers ...
... or this sliding, straddling beauty on Josh Anderson ...
... among his 33 saves on the evening.
On the one immediately above, watch that extra extension of the right skate at the close. That's what I'm talking about. Technical performance could never be an issue with Murray, but what had been missing for much of this season was that extra. He'd always been capable of it, he's shown it from time to time, and now it's nonstop.
Look, I'm the one who wrote from the outdoor game in Philadelphia fearing for this team's goaltending, openly suggesting Jim Rutherford should seek support at the position. I won't take it back, either. Murray had become maddening, appearing to steady himself only to lay an egg like that one a game or two later.
I'm also the one who wrote from that massive bounceback in Montreal that I hadn't seen him look that authoritative in months, and I closed that column with the following:
Murray’s had other false alarms over the winter. Maybe this was another. But if it wasn’t, then there’s an entirely new dynamic in play.
Welcome to the new dynamic, my friends. And I express that with confidence for two reasons:
1. Saves like those up top don't happen on one night at a snap. They're a cumulative process. Any goaltending coach will back this.
2. Since returning from a lower-body injury in mid-December, Murray has under-the-radar run up a .930 save percentage, fourth-best in the NHL among goaltenders with a minimum 15 starts in that span.
I asked Murray, as I had in Montreal, if anything, anything had been altered about his approach on or off the ice along the way:
That's a no. In fact, he'd additionally criticize his work on this night, dissatisfied in part with a short-side shorty by Cam Atkinson he felt he could have cut off to the blocker side.
"I made some pretty bad reads, honestly," he'd claim.
Funny, but when I took that to Atkinson, he offered nothing but praise:
So did Mike Sullivan: "I thought Matt was terrific. I thought he made some 10-bell saves to keep us in the game."
Evgeni Malkin, too: "We’re lucky we have Murray on our team. The last week or two he’s played unbelievable. We need to help him. Sometimes we lose players in the D-zone, we give them great chances to score. We have to play a little bit more tight in the D-zone, and we’ll be fine."
It starts in the back. From there, as hockey history has illustrated for a century and change, all things are possible.
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