Matt Murray’s rocky relationship with the Senators comes to abrupt end in trade

Although Matt Murray was traded to Toronto late Monday evening, it really felt like his tenure with the Ottawa Senators officially ended April 30.

When conducting his season-ending news conference with reporters that day, Ottawa head coach D.J. Smith was uncharacteristically candid and critical in assessing Murray’s time with the club.

“We brought him in a couple of years ago to be the starting goalie, and he’s just not available most nights,” Smith said April 30. “Not to his fault, injuries and sickness. He’s just unavailable. Look at how many teams in the league — if there is any — that has had their starting goalie miss that many games. I’d say there probably isn’t.”

Smith’s hallmark is defending his players — almost to a fault — in media sessions. You’ll rarely hear him criticize players, no matter how much they struggle. His answer about Murray was a stark departure from his routine and seemed to offer valuable insight into a fraught relationship with his netminder.

During their exit meeting at the end of the regular season, Smith and Murray were joined by general manager Pierre Dorion and goaltending coach Zac Bierk, and the four parties tried their best to smooth out what clearly has been a rocky relationship. But even as Dorion tried to characterize it to reporters as a “productive” session, the writing was clearly on the wall.

During his own season-ending news conference May 1, Dorion stressed that Murray was in the club’s plans for the 2022-23 season.

“He knows he’s coming back next year,” Dorion said.

In the following weeks, Dorion stressed that he was more than comfortable coming into training camp with Murray, Anton Forsberg and Filip Gustavsson, three goaltenders on one-way contracts for next season.

But that always felt like a facade.

Dorion knew he had to get rid of one of his three netminders, and it felt inevitable that Murray would be the odd one out.

The tenuous relationship between Murray and the Senators seemed to reach a breaking point last November, when the front office detonated the nuclear option and demoted the netminder to the AHL.

Murray was incensed and bewildered by the move.

In a conversation with The Athletic after his demotion to Belleville, Murray said, “It hasn’t really been communicated to me what the plan is.”

Murray felt he was unfairly made the scapegoat for the Senators’ atrocious start last season, which saw them win only four times in their first 20 games. Murray struggled with an illness to start the season, then had a bout of COVID-19 in November. When he returned to the net, he allowed four goals on 27 shots in a loss at San Jose on Nov. 24.

Forty-eight hours later, he was notified of his demotion while the club was at the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif. Rather than fly back home on the team charter — which might have been awkward — he opted to arrange his own flight home from Los Angeles to Ottawa.

When asked about the emotions he felt during that cross-country flight, Murray did not hide his frustration.

“At that point? Just confusion, honestly, was the main one,” Murray told The Athletic on Nov. 30. “A lot of confusion.”

From that point forward, it felt like the goalie and organization were on different paths.

Even when Murray went through a six-week stretch when he posted a .941 save percentage in January and February, there was uneasiness.

When he made his final start of the season March 5 at Arizona, Murray was left in the game despite giving up eight goals. And to add injury to insult, Murray sustained an upper-body ailment when he was bowled over by Nikita Zaitsev during a crease-crashing play.

It was his final appearance in a Sens jersey, and his status was shrouded in mystery for the final six weeks of the regular season. It was only during his season-ending news conference, when Murray revealed he had suffered a concussion, that anybody realized the true extent of his injury.

It was a strange end to a strange tenure in Ottawa.

The Senators have acquired Stanley Cup-winning goaltenders in the past, and each time the relationship has ended with some level of awkwardness.

Tom Barrasso didn’t lead them to a playoff victory in 2000.

Dominik Hasek’s greatest legacy was teaching the Ottawa fan base about the word “adductor.”

Murray was supposed to be different.

He was in the prime of his career at 26 years old, not a veteran netminder running on fumes. He was ready for a fresh start after being painted as injury-prone and inconsistent with the Penguins. Just days after acquiring him for a second-round draft pick and Jonathan Gruden, the Senators signed Murray to a four-year, $25 million deal. It was a bold and optimistic signing, predicated on the fact that Murray was ready to return to his Stanley Cup-winning form, a version the Senators had witnessed up close during the 2017 Eastern Conference finals.

But exactly halfway through that contract, his tenure ended in Ottawa in the same fashion it did in Pittsburgh. Murray started only 33 percent of his possible games with the Senators and won a grand total of 15 games.

The Senators reached a point of no return with Murray, and it felt like everybody else in the hockey world knew Ottawa’s situation. And that makes the trade with Toronto all the more impressive from Dorion’s perspective.

From the moment the Senators decided they were going to trade Murray, they knew it was simply about mitigating their losses. They owed Murray $15 million in real cash over the next two seasons.

How much would they have to eat to sever ties with him?

Would it be two-thirds of that amount — $10 million — if they went the buyout route? If they had to eat 50 percent of his salary in a trade, the number would be $7.5 million.

In the end, the number ends up being only $3.75 million in total — spread out over two seasons — as the Senators are retaining only 25 percent of Murray’s salary. Making it even more of a win from the Senators’ perspective is that they didn’t have to surrender a high draft pick or a prospect as a sweetener. Toronto accepted a third-round selection in next year’s draft as well as a seventh-round pick in 2024.

In some ways, this is more impressive than how Dorion got out of Evgenii Dadonov’s contract last summer without retaining a single penny.

For all of the criticism that has been lobbed toward the general manager in recent years, Dorion should be basking in the glow of his most successful stretch at the helm of the team. Over the past week, he has shrewdly bought out Colin White’s contract, traded for Alex DeBrincat and dumped Murray’s contract at a minimal cost.

Sure, the Senators will be on the hook for more than $4.5 million in salary-cap room next season for Murray, White, Bobby Ryan and Dion Phaneuf, players who won’t suit up for them. But that seems a small price to pay for a team that has suddenly shifted into “win-now” mode. The Senators should be able to absorb that redundant salary, re-sign all of their players and make another addition or two, with almost $24 million available in cap space, according to CapFriendly.

It’s fair to say the heat has been turned down on the general manager’s chair in Ottawa, with fans celebrating Dorion’s moves in recent days. If Dorion is able to land a top-four defenceman — or persuade Claude Giroux to sign in Ottawa — he could transform his perception in this marketplace. In fact, if he can accomplish those two goals, there is every reason to put him in the front-runner’s spot for the prestigious General Manager of the Year award in the 2022-23 season.

As for Murray, he might very well rediscover his Stanley Cup pedigree in Toronto and backstop the Leafs to postseason success. That’s what Kyle Dubas and his team are banking on.

But it’s also safe to say Murray was never going to regain that form in Ottawa.

And this was an inevitable divorce.

(Photo: Candice Ward / USA Today)