The Penguins on Wednesday traded Matt Murray, a two-time Stanley Cup champion, to the Senators for a second-round pick and forward prospect Jonathan Gruden.
Going into this offseason, it was all but a given that the Penguins would be moving on from Murray. Both Murray and Tristan Jarry were restricted free agents. With the flat salary cap, they couldn't afford to keep both, and Jarry supplanted Murray as the Penguins' No. 1 after an All-Star season.
"This is hard," Jim Rutherford said after the trade on Wednesday. "But we don't have a choice. It's part of our (salary-cap) system."
For Murray, speaking with Senators media for the first time on Thursday, it sounds like the trade was bittersweet. It's not easy to leave the Penguins after everything he went through with the team, but joining a young Senators team is an intriguing opportunity.
"Definitely mixed emotions for sure," he said. "It's my first time being traded so it's something new for me. I had a lot of good years in Pittsburgh obviously so I'll always miss it there but definitely a ton of excitement."
The Senators haven't made the playoffs since 2017, when Chris Kunitz ended their season in Game 7 overtime of the Eastern Conference Final to send the Penguins to the Stanley Cup Final for the second consecutive season. In the time since, the team went into a heavy rebuild, with only forward Colin White remaining in Ottawa from that 2017 Senators team. Young players like Brady Tkachuk and Thomas Chabot are some of the new faces of the team. The Senators have loaded up on draft picks in the past few years, including three first-round picks this year, two of which were in the top five.
Senators general manager Pierre Dorion said on the NHL Network after the trade that Murray will "without a doubt" be his team's clear No. 1 goaltender for the coming season. Beyond that, Murray looks to be the Senators' netminder of the future as they come out of this rebuild and make a push to return to the Stanley Cup playoffs, and he's excited for the opportunity.
"I see a team that's heading in the right direction and heading there quickly," he said of his impressions of his new team. "I paid a bit of attention to what happened in the draft and this is a young team stacked with talent and heading absolutely in the right direction and a team anybody would be excited to be a part of and a team that has a really bright future. I see a really good fit there for me, being a bit of an older guy I guess, and I feel like I have a lot to bring to a team like that and everybody should be really excited about the future of this team."
At 26 years old, Murray isn't quite an "older guy," but after two Stanley Cup runs, he's one of the most experienced players on a young Senators team, and will be looked to as a leader in his new locker room.
"I'm excited for that opportunity," he said. "I have a lot to offer. I learned a lot of lessons from some legends of the game in Pittsburgh and some great leaders so I hope that I can bring some of that to the room in Ottawa. I feel like I've been through a lot already in this league at a pretty young age but I feel that experience again will serve me well."
Murray had plenty of experienced, veteran players on his side when he was with the Penguins -- he called Marc-Andre Fleury "a huge mentor for me, a guy that I was lucky to play with." With the Senators, he'll look to take on that kind of mentor role for the young players in their system.
"I definitely hope that I can be that for younger guys in the future," he said. "That's the circle of goaltending, and goalies in particular have a special bond and one that we always stick together. So I really look forward to that and building relationships with all the guys around me."
With a post on Instagram, Murray thanked everyone in the Penguins organization -- from players to management to the equipment and training and staff -- for "some incredible years" as he closes one chapter in his career and moves on to a new one in Ottawa: