Matt Murray leads Penguins past Canadiens in Game 2 to even series

Game 2 of the Pittsburgh Penguins’ qualifying-round series with the Montreal Canadiens on Monday was delayed by about 10 minutes.

The previous contest at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Washington Capitals went to a shootout and held up for the Penguins and Canadiens.

That was about the only thing that hindered the Penguins.

Their goaltender did just about everything to impede the Canadiens in a 3-1 win to even their best-of-five series, 1-1.

Matt Murray, whose suitability to be the team’s starting goaltender in the playoffs has been debated publicly for nearly a month, if not longer, made 26 saves to record a victory in his 50th career postseason game.

While Murray didn’t face a particularly high volume of shots, he was forced to make several difficult saves, including on a handful of odd-man rushes.

Perhaps his most daunting came only 14 seconds into the third period. Protecting a 1-0 lead, Murray smothered a shot by Canadiens forward Tomas Tatar off a two-on-one rush.

“There was a great save within the first 30 seconds of the third period,” Penguins forward Jason Zucker said. “That’s definitely a huge momentum booster for us. Every save that he needed to make tonight, he did a great job. He battled hard, made some great plays. We’re going to need that throughout this playoff.”

The Penguins needed quite a bit of that after struggling to win over the past three playoffs. Monday’s victory snapped a losing streak of seven postseason games for the franchise. Its last playoff victory was a 3-1 home win in Game 4 of a second-round series against the Capitals on May 3, 2018.

Murray was in net for that victory more than two years ago. His philosophy about his vocation hasn’t changed much since then.

“What you need to do as a goalie is just worry about the next shot,” Murray said “Whether a goal goes in or you make a big save. It’s cliched, but it’s always one save at a time.”

Another cliche which held up in this game was the value of the first goal as the Penguins took the a lead 4 minutes, 25 seconds into regulation and never yielded it.

Forward Jake Guentzel pushed the puck up the right wing, gained the offensive zone and pulled up on the right-half wall. Spinning to his right, Guentzel allowed the play to develop and fed a cross-ice pass to forward Sidney Crosby streaking up the left wing. As Canadiens forward Joel Armia backchecked in vain, Crosby attacked the net and slipped a forehand shot through goaltender Carey Price’s five hole for his second goal of the playoffs.

Following a scoreless second period, the Penguins struck again at 14:41 of the third. Poking a puck past pinching Canadiens defenseman Brett Kulak at the Penguins’ blue line, Sheary created a two-on-one rush with forward Jason Zucker against Canadiens defenseman Jeff Petry. Pushing play up the right wing, Sheary drew in Petry and fed a centering pass that Zucker tapped past Price’s right skate for his first score of the playoffs.

The Canadiens remained undeterred and got on the scoreboard at 17:51 of the third. Canadiens forward Artturi Lehkonen lifted a wrister from the left circle. Murray made the initial save but allowed a rebound. Forward Jesperi Kotkaniemi beat Dumoulin to the rebound and lifted a wrister over Murray’s right skate for his second goal of the postseason.

An empty-net goal by Guentzel, his first of the postseason, secured victory at 19:50.

Murray’s play was arguably the biggest factor in ensuring a much-needed win.

“He was real solid again tonight,” coach Mike Sullivan said. “There weren’t a ton of scoring chances in the first couple of periods. Montreal pushed hard down the stretch, and they generated a couple high quality chances, and Matt made some big saves. For me, that’s what Matt does this time of year.

“He makes big saves at key times that help us win games. I thought he did that for us tonight.”

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