NHL Hockey Betting: Stanley Cup Playoffs for May 26, 2016
The Pittsburgh Penguins and Tampa Bay Lighting play for all the marbles on Thursday night.
TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING AT PITTSBURGH PENGUINS:
Game Seven is upon us. Even before this series began we kept telling you that it was dead even. A coin flip. A toss up. The linesmaker kept dealing what were ridiculous lines from a qualitative matchup standpoint and I kept taking the plus money. That’s what you do in an even matchup. So here we are and we’re going to do it again.
Not surprisingly, Pittsburgh is going to be nuts on Thursday night with thousands expected downtown–not including those inside the Mellon Arena….err….the Consol Energy Center. I don’t know why I keep referring to the Penguins old arena aka ‘The Igloo’. They haven’t played there for at least five years now. Sidney Crosby is getting a lot of love from the media and deservedly so. He hasn’t had a great playoffs offensively but it takes a real superstar to find other ways to help his team. No David Backes-like disappearances here. Crosby’s popularity–especially up North of the Border as he’s the captain of Canada’s National Hockey team–likely has something to do with the huge chalk price on Pittsburgh.
The big story in the ‘Steel City’ is the Pittsburgh goaltending situation. I think everyone knows the situation but just in case….21 year old rookie Matt Murray has been the Penguins’ starting goaltender since late in the regular season. Marc-Andre Fleury went down with his second concussion of the year in the stretch run and obviously that’s not something you want to rush back from. So Murray played all the way through in the playoffs and more often than not was solid bordering on brilliant. So Fleury gets activated before this series and sits for the first few games. Murray plays a lousy game in Game Four, gets yanked and replaced by Fleury. Fleury did mop up work in the Penguins’ 4-3 loss at Tampa Bay making 7 saves on seven shots. Based on that, Mike Sullivan decides to start Fleury in Game Five. He gives up four goals on 25 shots including the game winner for the Lightning (or the ‘game loser’ for the Penguins) in overtime. Murray is back in net for Game Six and he plays like a viking, making 28 saves on 30 shots including 17 of 19 in a third period onslaught by Tampa Bay in which they outshot Pittsburgh 19-8. One Pittsburgh scribe insisted that the season hung in the balance of Sullivan’s Game Six goaltending decision and only Fleury could keep the Penguins hopes alive for a Stanley Cup. Not so much.
Poor Fleury then gets all kinds of abuse from every corner. Websites that usually don’t may much attention to hockey took Fleury to task for his poor performance–like Deadspin’s article “Marc-Andre Fleury Is Back And Oh God That Went Poorly” Coach Sullivan kind of weaseled out of culpability for the decision to start Fleury in Game Five, insisting that it was only to give Matt Murray a rest:
“Matt played a lot of hockey played a lot of games. This is a battle you’re playing every other night. If it was the regular season, we probably wouldn’t play our starting goalie that many games in a row. As a young goaltender, sometimes that’s a tough load to carry.”
“(We) felt as though it was the right time for Marc, to give him an opportunity to get back in the game and try to win us a hockey game, and we were going to take it game by game. And we explained that to Matt, and we explained that to Marc. So our communication lines are very open with these guys. They understand where they’re at. They also understand that they’re both critically important to helping us win, and we value what they bring to this team.”
Murray must think we’re some kind of a sucker. There’s no way to validate this but you can be sure that if Fleury had gone out in Game Five and shut out the Tampa Bay Lightning that Murray would still be ‘resting’ when they dropped the puck to start Game Seven. If you’re going to rest your starter just say that. Of course Sullivan had to play that insipid “no announcement before gametime” routine that NFL coaches love so much.
The Penguins will start Murray again on Thursday and hopefully he’s nice and ‘rested’ for the biggest game of his young career. I also just read that Wednesday was Murray’s 22nd birthday. It’s natural to compare Murray to Fleury since the two had diametrically opposite rookie seasons. Fleury came into the league with a ton of hype, not surprising since he was the #1 overall pick in the 2003 NHL draft. Take a look at the #1 picks through the past decade and that will give you some idea of the expectations for Fleury. In 2004, some Russian kid named Alex Ovechkin went first overall. In 2005, a young Canadian kid named Sidney Crosby was the first overall pick.
Fleury didn’t set the league on fire immediately. In fact, he struggled a bit during his first few seasons. His biggest challenge was the mental game. Actually, his biggest challenge was fitting in with his teammates. Word is that he was something of an ‘outsider’ and somewhat aloof. He eventually figured that part out but it was likely out of necessity.
If Fleury was the show dog with the impeccable pedigree, Murray was something of the mutt that wanders into the backyard off the streets. He was a 3rd round pick in the 2012 draft and the #83 pick overall. He played junior hockey with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds of the Ontario Hockey League and after being drafted started his career with the Penguins’ AHL affiliate in Wilkes-Barre. As far as expectations you can see for yourself thanks to Google News. Murray was up and down from the minors a couple of times before he took over the starting gig. The media reaction was mixed. Most realized that he was a decent prospect–he won the AHL’s awards for ‘best goaltender’ and ‘rookie of the year’ last year–but how decent varies. Darren Dreger is a TSN Hockey Insider and he sounded kind of exasperated that the Penguins didn’t use Murray as trade bait:
Dreger explained that while Rutherford does have an expendable player with “tremendous value” in up-and-coming goaltender Matt Murray, the Penguins value him so highly that they’re unlikely to part with him – despite the fact that he’s blocked by franchise netminder Marc-Andre Fleury.
Other writers suggested that Murray would be key to the Penguins’ playoff hopes–because he could give Fleury some additional nights off. How things change in the span of a month or two. Now the prevailing opinion is that Fleury could be done in Pittsburgh.
Anyway, we’ll take the price in Game Seven just like we’ve done in every other game.
BET TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING +170 OVER PITTSBURGH PENGUINS