Man of the Week Monday: Player who Returned with a Vengeance

For Man of the Week Monday’s, we take a look at the best individual player from the past week on the Penguins: this week it was Matt Murray.

It was quite a wild week for the Penguins last week. The Pens started with a rocky loss to Anaheim, but then turned on the jets to win their next three in a row. While the Crosby line was once again stellar, we decided that our player of the week had to be Matt Murray.

For starters, in arguably the biggest game so far this year for the Penguins, Murray was placed with the tough challenge of trying to shut down a powerful Capitals attacking unit, headed by Ovechkin and Kuznetsov. It was only Murray’s second game back from injury, but you sure could not tell that from how he played.

The 24 year old Canadian put on a show and recorded 31 saves in a game that started the Penguins on their current win streak. Murray took what appeared to be an impossible situation and thrived under the pressure.

But that was not all. He then took the ice three days later, and did something that nobody could have seen coming… he had an even better performance. Against an albeit struggling Carolina team, Murray stopped all 39 shots that he faced, and would go on to record his second shutout so far this season.

This team not more than two months ago was questioning whether or not they had a severe goalie issue, but now things are looking better than ever. Throw in the solid play of Casey DeSmith, and the Penguins have quite the goaltending duo. With all that being said, this was certainly an excellent week for Murray, and it will be interesting to see how he adds to these performances in his next start.