Back before the doubts, the dips in form, the questions of whether he can ever again be what he once was, Matt Murray was a phenomenon.
Before he set foot in the big leagues, he rewrote history in the minors, setting the record for the longest shutout streak in AHL history (an absurd 304 minutes and 11 seconds) during his first campaign as a pro. By the end of that 2014-15 season, he’d put up 12 shutouts on the year, the most ever collected by an AHL rookie, the second-most ever amassed by anyone in that league.
By the end of the next season, he already had a Stanley Cup ring — not won as a lucky first-year passenger, but hard-earned, the 21-year-old unexpectedly starting 21 of 24 playoff games as Sidney Crosby and Co. climbed the 2016 mountain. The year after that? He took over Pittsburgh’s regular-season starting duties for real, and capped off what was technically his true rookie year by riding a sterling .937 save percentage through the playoffs to win his second Stanley Cup in as many attempts.
Mike Buckley had a front-row seat to that meteoric rise. The goaltending coach worked alongside Murray during the netminder’s junior days in Sault Ste. Marie, then in the AHL with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, and finally with the big club for those two title runs.
From the beginning, he says, Murray’s talent was clear.
“Right off the bat, you could tell he was very mature,” Buckley remembers. “He had a style of play that, you could tell right away he was going to transition to professional hockey fairly easily. Just because he could read the game very well.”
When Murray’s at his best — whether back then, or even still — it’s that innate understanding of the game that rises to the top.
“I think it’s mainly his anticipation, his ability to just stay calm under pressure — no matter what the situation was, he would maintain that level of calmness,” the coach says. “You have certain types of situations as a goaltender. You have moments where you need to just be calm and keep it simple and have a really basic save. You have saves that require a little bit more urgency, maybe an odd-man rush, a two-on-one where you’ve got to get across the crease. Then you have this flat-out desperation, where you are just competing and battling.
“And if you look at Matt in all three of those situations, he looks exactly the same. He looks very calm. Maybe his body’s moving at a totally different speed, but you can just see the clarity in his mindset.”
During those early years, as Murray was trying to balance adjusting to the NHL with seemingly taking it over, Buckley’s focus with the young goaltender was as much on solidifying that mindset as it was polishing up his mechanics.
“We spent a lot more time working on the mental game and just mindset performance,” the coach says. “It wasn’t so much trying to take the way he was playing and drastically change it, just really taking baby steps. … A big thing that we always had with each other was ‘Love over fear.’ Choose love. Just loving the game, loving getting out there, loving the hard moments — loving the pressure, as opposed to fearing it.
“And especially the first Cup run, he really, really embraced that motto. It’s one that we would say to each other all the time, ‘Love over fear.’ I think that had a big impact on his game.”
Matt Murray lifts the Stanley Cup during his time with the Pittsburgh Penguins. (Mark Humphrey/AP)
There were, of course, aspects of Murray’s play that required fine-tuning, even as he racked up shutouts and drove up his save percentage. Still, shifting his approach to those details also seemed to come back to mindset.
“I think, in Pittsburgh, where he had some struggles is where he would start to play deep in net and he’d be very conservative in net. … He would generally start off each season playing a little bit deeper — I think he always kind of had the mindset that he needed to conserve his energy so he could play a lot of games,” Buckley says. “Where he had more success was when he was a little more aggressive, not just in his conditioning but just his mindset. And, also, same thing with practice — just put in the hard work in practice, don’t conserve anything.”
Where the story went after that dreamlike early chapter in Pittsburgh is well-documented. As quickly as he rose, the young netminder came back to Earth, the numbers dipping, the starting role beginning to fall to Tristan Jarry. Half a decade after he’d burst onto the scene in Cup-clinching glory, Murray was headed for a reset in Ottawa.
But having watched it all play out firsthand from behind the scenes, Buckley says it was more complicated than it might’ve seemed from afar, few understanding just how much pressure was on Murray’s shoulders during those early years, and the toll it took.
“When you look at the success he had at such a young age, it’s unprecedented. No goaltender in the NHL has ever done that — two Stanley Cups as a rookie. No one’s ever accomplished that. But no one’s ever faced that level of pressure, so there’s no handbook on that — you know, there’s no one that you can talk to and say, ‘Hey, you’ve done this before. How do you handle it?’” Buckley says. “He was the first. And not to say that he wasn’t ready for that enormous level of expectation, but when you’re playing on a team that is — let’s be honest, Pittsburgh at that time was a very offensive team, that’s going to have breakdowns. And when they do, they’re going to be significant. And you’ve got to come up with a huge save.
“And if you didn’t come up with that huge save at the right time, on a consistent basis, then you become the guy that gets kind of pointed at in the media. And I believe that’s exactly what happened with Matt. … I think for someone who had that much expectation on him at such a young age, that pressure at times got to him.”
That his move in 2020-21 was to a young, rebuilding Senators team didn’t necessarily help.
“Coming out of Pittsburgh on a low note and going to a situation where Ottawa was a younger team, not a very forgiving defensive structure in front of him, and multiple injuries — that’s hard to get a good footing for a goalie,” Buckley says. “If you talk about one of the hardest scenarios to go into when trying to come out of an already tough predicament, you know, that would be a tough one.”
The dropoff in Murray’s play over the past two seasons seems to be about more than just a talented goaltender suffering the defensive mistakes of a porous blue line, though, according to goalie coach Rob Gherson — a former Washington Capitals draft pick who spent a half-decade as a pro in the AHL, ECHL and UHL.
“He does a lot of things probably better now than he did when he was a rookie,” Gherson says of Murray, having pored over tape of the former Penguin and Senator recently. “You can see when he’s in his stance, he’s a little bit bigger, his chest is up higher, he has a little more knee-bend in his stance. Theoretically, that should make him a better goalie — he’s filling more net, he’s in a more athletic position. … But I think the biggest thing, watching clips from last year, is he’s really questioning himself as he makes saves.”
Gherson pulled a few clips from the end of Murray’s run in Ottawa to illustrate his point. Take these plays from the 27-year-old’s most recent NHL games, late in the Senators’ 2021-22 campaign:
“He makes a good save here, but he’s really squeezing his knees together, trying to find the puck,” Gherson says of the above sequence against the Coyotes, from Murray’s final game as a Senator. “He doesn’t know where the puck is. For most goalies, that’s an issue of you thinking you have to do everything.”
“Here, that’s a huge, big, exaggerated poke-check,” he says of the above play against the Lightning. “And again, he’s trying to find the puck, he’s looking down, he doesn’t really know where the puck is.”
“When a goalie’s really confident in their ability, they’re going to maybe get toes to the top of the crease. But when you’re fighting the puck, when you think you have to do everything, you charge out and come flying out and just try to be big and block the puck,” he says, pointing to the above breakdown against the Canadiens. “That shows me that he didn’t really have a lot of confidence last year in himself, or in the team. I’m not sure what it was, but it manifests in trying to do too much, and then letting in goals that you probably should stop because you’re trying to do too much.”
On the other hand, rewind to the early Pittsburgh years, when Murray was at his best, and you see a more focused approach.
“In 2016, you can see him in these situations — Pittsburgh gave up good chances too, it wasn’t like it was always easy — but it’s so controlled,” the coach says of the above sequence from Murray’s first Cup year. “He’s not panicking or doing any extra movements. He just beats the pass, he follows the rebound, and he’s on it.”
For those who’ve never played the position, it’s difficult to understand just how much the performance of the blue line in front of a netminder can impact their own success, Gherson says. It’s more than simply the barrage of higher-danger scoring chances to deal with. There’s also, like Buckley described, the mental aspect of the position, which can shift significantly if you lose trust in your defenders.
“What happens when you’re playing on a team that’s giving up a lot of shots or a lot of scoring chances every night, and losing, or even on a team that just doesn’t score a lot, you feel like you have to be perfect,” Gherson explains. “You feel like you have to start doing other guys’ jobs — instead of just focusing on the shooter on a two-on-one, you’re worried about the pass. And then when you’re worried about the pass, you start drifting towards the middle of the net instead of staying on an angle, and you start letting in goals that are your fault. … When it starts going the wrong way, it can be hard to fix it.
“When you start letting goals in that are your fault because you’re trying to do your defenceman’s job, that starts weighing on you. And you start trying to do [even more]. And that’s when you lose confidence.”
Rocky as it might’ve been, the slate’s now been wiped clean for Murray, the veteran landing in Toronto via trade in July after a disappointing two-year run in Ottawa.
And while the reviews for GM Kyle Dubas’s swing at replacing former starter Jack Campbell have been mixed, there’s reason to believe the performance of the unit in front of Murray will better equip him to show his best with his new club.
“In a general sense, I would say the Leafs play pretty similar to the good Pittsburgh teams that he was on around 2016, 2017,” says tactics expert Jack Han, who served as an analyst for the Maple Leafs for two seasons, and as an assistant coach for the AHL’s Toronto Marlies in 2019-20. “There are some differences in terms of the defensive structure and the details of how plays are defended, but overall, whether it’s the Leafs now or Pittsburgh a few years ago, these are both teams that like to have the puck, that defend mostly by having the puck and being up ice.”
Though the complexion of their offence might lead some to assume the Maple Leafs are a run-and-gun squad, they’re far from a team that regularly hangs their goaltenders out to dry in the name of scoring chances, says Han.
“I think Toronto now, they’re a pretty good team defensively, from a personnel and from a structure point of view. I think it’s a little bit overrated how much they give up. Certainly any time that you play with the puck, there’s a chance that you turn it over at the blue line and it goes back the other way. That’s the price of doing business if you want to play with the puck,” he says. “I don’t see Toronto as especially vulnerable. As a matter of fact, I think, for the most part, they do a good job of helping their goalie. … You know, they’re not as good as Colorado, but they’re not that far off, for a team that plays with the puck and plays more of a possession style.”
That should be a positive for Murray, Gherson says, in terms of reining in any tendency to try to do too much in the cage.
“They’ve been a pretty good environment for the last few years defensively, where they’re not giving a ton of scoring chances up. And when you’re not facing a ton of scoring chances as a goalie, you can be confident that all you’ve got to do is your job. You don’t have to do everybody’s job.”
For Buckley, who’s seen Murray at his best, and who knows him better than most, the key to the two-time champ finding success in Toronto will be about more than the team in front of him, though. It’s also a matter of going full-throttle from the very beginning of his run in a Maple Leafs sweater, of moving past that old desire to hold back.
“You know, few and far between are the goalies that are going to play the workload that they used to play — 70 games, 65 games. It’s become much more of a two-man workload, and I think that’s going to be a huge part of him having success in Toronto. If he can accept that, that’s where he’s going to be at his best.” Buckley says. “And then, in the time that he has to be able to work, work hard and play his game the right way, without trying to conserve anything.”
As for the other questions, of the pressure and the spotlight and the burden of being relied upon to lead his club through another high-stakes playoff run, Buckley’s seen Murray weather that storm before. He’s watched that pressure roll off his back, and he’s watched it weigh heavy upon him.
The question moving forward will be whether learning from the latter allows Murray to experience the former once again.
“He has the experience of dealing with that pressure, having won those two Cups. I know it’s a different market in Toronto, but the Pittsburgh media is extremely hard on goaltending. … And he’s dealt with that,” Buckley says. “I think as he’s gotten older, he’s learned not to allow the media and all that noise to affect him as much. So I think he’s well-built to deal with any of that type of distraction.
“For him, it’s just going to be playing his game. And what’s gotten him all the success that he’s had is being in control. Being in command of his game, being aggressive when he can be aggressive, and utilizing his play-reading skills. … I think when he’s at his best, he’s rising above that pressure.”
Christine Sinclair scored one final goal at B.C. Place, helping the Portland Thorns to a 6-0 victory over the Whitecaps Girls Elite team. The soccer legend has announced she’ll retire from professional soccer at the end of the National Women’s Soccer League season. (Oct. 16, 2024)
At his first news conference as England’s newly appointed head coach, Thomas Tuchel – a German – was asked on Wednesday what message he had for fans who would have preferred an Englishman in charge of their beloved national team.
“I’m sorry, I just have a German passport,” he said, laughing, and went on to profess his love for English football and the country itself. “I will do everything to show respect to this role and to this country.”
The soccer rivalry between England and Germany runs deep and it’s likely Tuchel’s passport will be used against him if he doesn’t deliver results for a nation that hasn’t lifted a men’s trophy since 1966. But his appointment as England’s third foreign coach shows that, increasingly, even the top countries in the sport are abandoning the long-held belief that the national team must be led by one of their own.
Four of the top nine teams in the FIFA world rankings now have foreign coaches. Even in Germany, a four-time World Cup winner which has never had a foreign coach, candidates such as Dutchman Louis van Gaal and Austrian Oliver Glasner were considered serious contenders for the top job before the country’s soccer federation last year settled on Julian Nagelsmann, who is German.
“The coaching methods are universal and there for everyone to apply,” said German soccer researcher and authorChristoph Wagner, whose recent book “Crossing the Line?” historically addresses Anglo-German rivalry. “It’s more the personality that counts and not the nationality. You could be a great coach, and work with a group of players who aren’t perceptive enough to get your methods.”
Not everyone agrees.
English soccer author and journalist Jonathan Wilson said it was “an admission of failure” for a major soccer nation to have a coach from a different country.
“Personally, I think it should be the best of one country versus the best of another country, and that would probably extend to coaches as well as players,” said Wilson, whose books include “Inverting The Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics.”
“To say we can’t find anyone in our country who is good enough to coach our players,” he said, “I think there is something slightly embarrassing, slightly distasteful about that.”
That sentiment was echoed by British tabloid The Daily Mail, which reported on Tuchel’s appointment with the provocative headline “A Dark Day for England.”
While foreign coaches are often found in smaller countries and those further down the world rankings, they are still a rarity among the traditional powers of the game. Italy, another four-time world champion, has only had Italians in charge. All of Spain’s coaches in its modern-day history have been Spanish nationals. Five-time World Cup winner Brazil has had only Brazilians in charge since 1965, and two-time world champion France only Frenchmen since 1975.
And it remains the case that every World Cup-winning team, since the first tournament in 1930, has been coached by a native of that country. The situation is similar for the women’s World Cup, which has never been won by a team with a foreign coach, though Jill Ellis, who led the U.S. to two trophies, is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in England.
Some coaches have made a career out of jumping from one national team to the next. Lars Lagerbäck, 76, coached his native Sweden between 2000-09 and went on to lead the national teams of Nigeria, Iceland and Norway.
“I couldn’t say I felt any big difference,” Lagerbäck told The Associated Press. “I felt they were my teams and the people’s teams.”
For Lagerbäck, the obvious disadvantages of coaching a foreign country were any language difficulties and having to adapt to a new culture, which he particularly felt during his brief time with Nigeria in 2010 when he led the African country at the World Cup.
Otherwise, he said, “it depends on the results” — and Lagerbäck is remembered with fondness in Iceland, especially, after leading the country to Euro 2016 for its first ever international tournament, where it knocked out England in the round of 16.
Lagerbäck pointed to the strong education and sheer number of coaches available in soccer powers like Spain and Italy to explain why they haven’t needed to turn to an overseas coach. At this year’s European Championship, five of the coaches were from Italy and the winning coach was Luis de la Fuente, who was promoted to Spain’s senior team after being in charge of the youth teams.
Portugal for the first time looked outside its own borders or Brazil, with which it has historical ties, when it appointed Spaniard Roberto Martinez as national team coach last year. Also last year, Brazil tried — and ultimately failed — to court Real Madrid’s Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti, with Brazilian soccer federation president Ednaldo Rodrigues saying: “It doesn’t matter if it’s a foreigner or a Brazilian, there’s no prejudice about the nationality.”
The United States has had a long list of foreign coaches before Mauricio Pochettino, the Argentine former Chelsea manager who took over as the men’s head coach this year.
The English Football Association certainly had no qualms making Tuchel the national team’s third foreign-born coach, after Swede Sven-Goran Eriksson (2001-06) and Italian Fabio Capello (2008-12), simply believing he was the best available coach on the market.
Unlike Eriksson and Capello, Tuchel at least had previous experience of working in English soccer — he won the Champions League in an 18-month spell with Chelsea — and he also speaks better English.
That won’t satisfy all the nay-sayers, though.
“Hopefully I can convince them and show them and prove to them that I’m proud to be the English manager,” Tuchel said.
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AP Sports Writer Jerome Pugmire in Paris contributed to this story.
TORONTO – Bobby McMann watched from the press box on opening night.
Just over a week later, the Maple Leafs winger took a twirl as the first star.
McMann went from healthy scratch to unlikely offensive focal point in just eight days, putting up two goals in Toronto’s 6-2 victory over the Los Angeles Kings on Wednesday.
The odd man out at the Bell Centre against the Montreal Canadiens, he’s slowly earning the trust of first-year head coach Craig Berube.
“There’s a lot of good players on this team,” McMann said of his reaction to sitting out Game 1. “Maybe some guys fit better in certain scenarios than others … just knowing that my opportunity would come.”
The Wainwright, Alta., product skated on the second line with William Nylander and Max Domi against Los Angeles, finishing with those two goals, three hits and a plus-3 rating in just over 14 minutes of work.
“He’s been unbelievable,” said Nylander, who’s tied with McMann for the team lead with three goals. “It’s great when a player like that comes in.”
The 28-year-old burst onto the scene last February when he went from projected scratch to hat-trick hero in a single day after then-captain John Tavares fell ill.
McMann would finish 2023-24 with 15 goals and 24 points in 56 games before a knee injury ruled him out of Toronto’s first-round playoff loss to the Boston Bruins.
“Any time you have success, it helps the confidence,” he said. “But I always trust the abilities and trust that they’re there whether things are going in or (I’m not) getting points. Just trying to play my game and trust that doing the little things right will pay off.”
McMann was among the Leafs’ best players against the Kings — and not just because of what he did on the scoresheet. The forward got into a scuffle with Phillip Danault in the second period before crushing Mikey Anderson with a clean hit in the third.
“He’s a power forward,” Berube said. “That’s how he should think the game, night in and night out, as being a power forward with his skating and his size. He doesn’t have to complicate the game.”
Leafs goaltender Anthony Stolarz knew nothing about McMann before joining Toronto in free agency over the summer.
“Great two-way player,” said the netminder. “Extremely physical and moves really well, has a good shot. He’s a key player for us in our depth. I was really happy for him to get those two goals.
“Works his butt off.”
ON TARGET
Leafs captain Auston Matthews, who scored 69 times last season, ripped his first goal of 2024-25 after going without a point through the first three games.
“It’s not going to go in every night,” said Matthews, who added two assists against the Kings. “It’s good to see one fall … a little bit of the weight lifted off your shoulders.”
WAKE-UP CALL
Berube was animated on the bench during a third-period timeout after the Kings cut a 5-0 deficit to 5-2.
“Taking care of the puck, being harder in our zone,” Matthews said of the message. “There were times in the game, early in the second, in the third period, where the momentum shifted and we needed to grab it back.”
PATCHES SITS
Toronto winger Max Pacioretty was a healthy scratch after dressing the first three games.
“There’s no message,” Berube said of the 35-year-old’s omission. “We have extra players and not everybody can play every night. That’s the bottom line. He’s been fine when he’s played, but I’ve got to make decisions as a coach, and I’m going to make those decisions — what I think is best for the team.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
