Kovacevic: Murray's a worthy champion, but his exit was scripted from the start

'Murray blew it ... and that's almost ideal'

Ring a bell for anyone?

That was the headline atop this site, atop my column written from San Jose, Calif, filed late on the evening of June 4, 2016. Soon after the Penguins had lost Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final to the Sharks on a couple goals of seriously dubious pedigree, not least of which was Joel Ward's moon shot from elsewhere in the Bay area:

A-ha, so now it rings a bell! I see how you roll!

A few minutes after Joonas Donskoi had scorched Murray high short-side in overtime for the Sharks' first win of the series, sending SAP Center into one of the loudest celebrations I'd covered in my career, it was infinitely quieter in a cramped hallway by the visitors' dressing room where the Penguins' media relations staff ushered out Murray to meet with media. There was so many microphones, so many cameras, one could barely breathe, much less move.

Except for Murray, even though he was pressed against the cement-block wall behind him. He was, in his own way, right where he needed to be.

Watch:

I know, right?

As Murray proceeded to answer another reporter's question with the same cool, the same calm, Mario Lemieux was trying to pass through the same hall. And as I tried to make room for that, Mario glanced across at Murray, then grabbed my elbow and whispered, "We're fine."

They were, of course. They always were when Murray had his back to the wall.

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Murray was traded Wednesday, I'm betting you know without any bell being rung, to the Senators for a second-round pick in this same day's NHL Draft, as well as 20-year-old forward prospect Johnny Gruden. Jim Rutherford fared quite well in the exchange, considering that Braden Holtby and a dozen-plus other veteran goaltenders are two days away from unrestricted free agency, and that his Ottawa counterpart, Pierre Dorion, made the move without first negotiating a long-term extension with Murray.

I don't have much to add regarding the exchange. Again, Rutherford fared quite well.

I'm infinitely more interested in the initial exchange. The one our city and its hockey franchise were tasked with making between Murray and Marc-Andre Fleury.

We might never see another like it.

In 2016, Murray finished that job in San Jose, with Fleury hurt. In 2017, Murray finished the next job in Nashville, with Fleury having been benched in a call by Mike Sullivan midway through the Eastern Conference final against Ottawa that'll resonate in local circles for years, if not decades, to come. Even though, again, the Penguins prevailed. Even though Murray's 27-save shutout in the clinching Game 6 came with Nashville getting all five of the night's power plays. Even though he didn't allow a goal for the final 146 minutes, 52 seconds of that series.

Shortly thereafter, after Fleury was allowed to be claimed in the Vegas expansion draft, he returned to PPG Paints Arena amid a scene so emotional, so passionate that, as I wrote at the time, it was ... unsettling. For, at the far end of the rink, there was the current guy, who'd been a model citizen on top of being fresh off two championships. And at Fleury's end, there was adulation Murray had to know he'd never, ever hear in this city.

It's felt as if this exit had been scripted forever ago, you know?

It's partly because of Fleury, and there's no denying that. Because of how he'd parted and, maybe just as powerful, how he'd go on to help the Golden Knights to an astonishing run to the Final in their expansion year, even as the Penguins were eliminated by the eventual champion Capitals on, of all things, Murray getting beaten on a breakaway by Evgeny Kuznetsov.

The decision was made to keep Murray over Fleury well before the team got to Nashville. One night in Washington, Ron Burkle, Mario's co-owner, confided as much to me. He told me ownership would've gladly given back their cut of the Vegas expansion fee -- $15 million per team -- if they could've kept both goaltenders. But the call was made, by Rutherford and all the way up, that Murray being just 23 years old at the time, showing all that promise, and consuming far less of the salary cap ... and it was all too much to ignore.

Would or should the Penguins have kept Fleury instead?

Eh. That's fantasy-land stuff. No one could know then what they know now and, even if they did, I'm still not sure there's a firm answer to be found.

Besides, if I'm being blunt, this exit, script and all, came mostly because of Murray.

He had everything he could've wanted here. An established championship pedigree. A talented core within his team, all of whom trusted him implicitly, as we all could see in this remarkable scene following the Penguins' lone win in the recent playoff loss to the Canadiens:

A head coach who repeatedly stood by his side. A fan base that, although still smitten with Fleury, were almost as vocal with the 'Mur-ray! Mur-ray!' chants when he'd perform well. And on top of all that, he was blessed with the personality to look past the endless adulation for his predecessor. As Murray joked with me once this past winter, "Hey, I like the guy, too, you know?"

He had all of that. He should've been, within that setting, the No. 1 goaltender here for a decade or more.

The reason he wasn't: He didn't play well enough.

Set aside the drama and narratives, and coldly consider performance the past two seasons:

• In 2018-19, which Murray finished with a fine .919 save percentage, he'd started so slowly that he briefly lost his job to journeyman Casey DeSmith. Meaning on merit. Meaning Sullivan said so.

• This past season, among all 45 NHL goaltenders to log at least 30 games, Murray's .899 save percentage ranked 40th. Meaning in hockey's most vital goaltending metric. Meaning the exact same figure as the Flyers' Brian Elliott, long one of the NHL's worst at the position. And he again lost his job, this time to Tristan Jarry. And again, on merit.

• In the past two playoffs, though Murray acquitted himself well, the Penguins lost six of his seven starts, including the four-game sweep by the Islanders in 2019, then two of three against the Canadiens before Sullivan finally turned to Jarry.

Picking up the pattern?

Every year since Murray's initial promotion to Pittsburgh from Wilkes-Barre, in some form or other, he's needed to have his back to the wall to be at his best. He's needed a bad game or a bad few games. He's needed to lose his job. He's needed to see someone else winning in the playoffs. He's needed to find an extra push.

If I'd heard members of this coaching staff complain about it once, I'd heard it 30 million times: They could tell right from the opening faceoff when Murray would "battle" to stop the puck, and when he wouldn't. Heck, Sullivan would occasionally speak openly about this.

Why did it happen?

Impossible for me to say. This is hardly some under-motivated, underachieving individual, in hockey or in life. 

But the bottom line in this case literally became the bottom line: The Penguins were facing Murray heading into restricted free agency, with his agent having bandied about within the industry that he'd welcome a long-term extension akin to those recently signed by Andrei Vasilevskiy and Sergei Bobrovsky with the two Florida teams -- both north of $9 million per season -- and there's no way they could even entertain anything in that context. Not with Jarry showing as well as he did, not with their salary-cap constrictions but, chiefly, not without knowing what kind of additional push they'd have to concoct to get an appropriate return on the investment.

So, Rutherford did what was left for him to do. 

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Man, I like Murray. And respect him. Always have. Always will. I've got zero wish for this column to come across any other way, in spite of the background that's indispensable to my broader point.

In wishing him well in Canada's capital or wherever he winds up, I'll bear in mind above all that the city of Pittsburgh has won 16 major championships, and Murray played a prominent role in one-eighth of those. And I'll remember scenes like these:

Above all, it's that one right up there. It was in Nashville and, after Fleury made his lap with the Cup, he skated promptly across to pass it to Murray for a lap of his own, bypassing some veterans, bypassing convention.

That moved Murray to share this:

Don't skip that video. Watch it to the end. That's who Matt Murray is.

His script isn't yet complete, and neither is that of these core Penguins. Nor, for that matter, the remaining offseason to attempt to revitalize a stagnant roster.

But the joint script, that ended just where it needed to.