Leafs' goalie Matt Murray is cleared to return from injury, but he won't play Saturday
Goaltender Matt Murray has been cleared to return.
But the Toronto Maple Leafs stopper will not suit up Saturday against the Vancouver Canucks despite having the thumbs-up from doctors.
Murray is more likely to play his first game in nearly a month on Tuesday against the Pittsburgh Penguins — his former club — after being sidelined on the injured reserve with an adductor injury.
“Ultimately, we just made the decision that they wanted to continue to build up his workload,” Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe told reporters Saturday morning. “Physically, he’s doing good. He’s been cleared. All of that sort of stuff. The two practice days were really important to give him those reps and give him an opportunity to see where he was at.
“After he got through the first one, they started to look at it. There’s a lot of things that our performance team, they track for players coming back from injury and they just felt a little more time would serve him well.
“At this point we’re working more towards Tuesday for him.”
The 28-year-old made one start this season before sustaining the injury, allowing four goals on 23 shots.
“It’s improved each day for sure,” Murray told reporters on Wednesday. “I was disappointed at first, for sure. It’s an injury I’ve never had before, kind of came out of nowhere. So it was definitely pretty disappointing and a little bit frustrating.”
His return could come at a key time. Fellow netminder Ilya Samsonov is week-to-week with a knee injury.
Erik Kallgren has been the de facto starter for Toronto. He is 1-2-3 with a 3.00 goals-against average and .886 save percentage in seven games, including six starts. He was tagged with the loss against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Friday night.
The Maple Leafs also signed Keith Petruzzelli from the Toronto Marlies to shore up their goaltending depth amidst the injury trouble to Murray and Samsonov.
“I think he’s earned it,” Keefe said. “Back-to-back, of course, is far from ideal and normally it’s when you’d make a goalie change, but the fact there’s no travel is a little bit different. But really we think Kally’s done a good job for us and deserves a chance to go back in the net.”
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