When Matt Murray and Anthony Stolarz were drafted 38 picks apart in June 2012, Joseph Woll was a kid playing travel hockey just outside St. Louis.
It is odd the way things work out sometimes. Murray got to the NHL rather quickly with the Pittsburgh Penguins, expected to be the backup to the backup behind Marc-Andre Fleury, and suddenly and for real reasons, the job as starter on those great hockey teams became his. He was 22 when he won first Stanley Cup in Pittsburgh, 23 when he won his second.
Somewhere in a box now there are two Stanley Cup rings. No one else on this Maple Leafs roster can say they have more than one.
Stolarz, who is bigger than Murray, was drafted in the second round that June, and didn’t played his first National Hockey League game until after Murray had been part of two parades.
Murray was the goalie he wanted his career to be like. Not necessarily in size or shape style. Just in wins and status and championships and salary.
The path is rarely the same for any goaltenders — let alone the three who will eventually wind up as two when this Maple Leafs season begins.
It’s a most unusual race to a finish line that could go on for a good part of the season once it begins. It’s a first among equals race of sorts between those who have never really been equals in their careers.
And for an athlete such as Murray, who has run the gamut as an NHL goaltender, he has the perspective that comes with age, experience, success and failure. He knew greatness so early in his career, difficulty and pressure in the middle years, injury trouble the past three or four seasons. Murray is now old enough, and mature enough, to make sense of the good and the bad in his past, realistic enough to understand that’s it’s all but certain he will start the season in Toronto.
What he doesn’t know is whether that Toronto means with the Leafs or the Marlies.
He can’t really think about all those permutations right now with games to play and practices to get through. He understands that whatever happens, happens. He can control his play. He can’t control what the defence does in front of him. He can’t control what the coach, Craig Berube, or the general manager, Brad Treliving, think of him.
He played only half a game against what they called the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday night, and didn’t allow a goal against in seven shots. Didn’t have to do anything spectacular but didn’t make any mistakes.
And he also knows this much: He won Stanley Cups when he wasn’t projected to do so and made his most money in his career when he was supposed to be something no one seems able to do — and that’s make saves for the Ottawa Senators.
Now he’s married with two kids, a man, not a child, composed and collected heading into his ninth NHL season. Hoping there will be a ninth NHL season.
And believing it will happen. He has to believe. Athletes are usually the last to give up on themselves. They believe when others stop believing. But after hip surgery, recovery and a lot of rehab time being spoiled by the Leafs rehab team, because believing is all he may have left.
An old hockey man I know has an expression: If someone asks you to name your starting goaltender and you hesitate, it means you don’t have a capable starting goaltender. It’s nice to have two or three goalies fighting for two spots — coaches love real competition — but you want a guy who can believe in.
Maple Leafs management won’t declare anything as absolute right now, but they would like to start the season with Woll as their starer and the giant Stolarz, fresh off his Stanley Cup season in Florida, as their backup.
Murray is the insurance policy.
That’s the plan. But the plan in Pittsburgh years ago was that Fleury would make all the big starts with the Penguins, and the plan in Ottawa was that Murray would take their team from also-ran to playoff contention, and neither of those plans worked out.
Jim Rutherford, the general manager in Pittsburgh, once said that Murray operates best in uncertainty. He stopped playing great in Pittsburgh after Fleury had been sent to Vegas. He was the starter in Pittsburgh, the starter in Ottawa, now he fights for whatever crumbs comes after Woll and Stolarz, neither of whom share his kind of resume.
Woll has never started more than 24 games in an NHL season, never more than 32 in the American League, never more than 37 in college hockey. As a kid, he was compared to Jake Oettinger among the best kid goalies in America. Stolarz, like Woll, has never started more than 24 games in an NHL season. In Pittsburgh, Murray started 193 in parts of five seasons, 47, 45 and 50, in three consecutive seasons after winning his first Cup.
Murray has won more games in single seasons than Woll or Storarz have in their careers.
Whatever decision is made when training camp comes to an end may not be the final decision on Leafs goaltenders. Woll has to stay healthy. Stolarz has to stop pucks. Both of those are uncertain.
There is still time and a lot of wiggle room for Matt Murray, the against-all-odds goalie, to work his way back to the NHL.
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