CRANBERRY, Pa. -- Playing one of the most stressful and potentially injurious position in all of sports, Matt Murray has usually been the picture of calm.
The Penguins goaltender's sitting heart rate seems to be between 55 and needing a mirror under his nose. It's been that ability to singularly focus on the task at hand and to brush aside adversity that has helped propel the 24-year-old to a pair of Stanley Cup championships in two of his first three seasons.
But the last two games have seen Murray show a bit of uncharacteristic emotion, at least by his standard.
Hard to blame him either. In each of the last two games, Murray has taken hard contact by opposing forwards whether incidental or not.
Is he getting hit more than usual?
"I think so," Murray said after Sunday's practice at the Lemieux Complex. "It seems like it."
Are teams trying to taking liberties?
"Definitely taking a lot of hits, that's for sure," he deadpanned.
The latest came Saturday when Patrick Marleau crashed the net after scoring the second goal in the Penguins' 5-0 loss to the Maple Leafs:
To be clear, Marleau hardly has the reputation of a dirty player. The 39-year-old has received votes for the Lady Byng in 12 of the last 14 seasons. But contact is still contact.
"I'm out there to stop the puck, that's got to be my focus," Murray was saying. "If I have to take a hit to do so, it just is what it is. Just hope the refs will do something when they need to."
Apparently, referees Frederick L'Ecuyer and Brain Pochmara didn't believe a call was warranted against Marleau. Though Murray engaged the officials in a brief conversation, he said no explanation was given as to why their was no call.
Two nights earlier in Brooklyn, the Islanders' Brock Nelson was ridden hard into the Penguins' goalie and again there was no call from either Tom Chmielewski or Justin St. Pierre.
After three-plus seasons in the league, Murray has picked up on particular officials' tendencies. He says he tries to converse with all the refs throughout the game. Some are just more receptive than others.
"I try to, when you're getting hit like that, you just want to know why there's no call if there isn't," he said. "Some guys are good at letting you know. Some guys don't want to talk to you, which I get because we're not necessarily happy after we get smoked like that. I totally get it. But I try to talk to the refs as much as I can to get a sense of where they're coming from."
Given Murray's injury history, which includes three concussions, the latest suffered in practice on Oct. 8 that forced him to miss a game, you can understand the goalie's sensitivity to being "smoked."
However, his coach said that there has been nothing out of the ordinary.
"It's incidental contact," Mike Sullivan said. "It's part of the game. It happens every night."
He added that Murray plays deeper in his net than most goalies, due to his size.
"I think the league is trying to protect the goalies as best they can," Sullivan said. "When they see the contact that's maybe avoidable that occurs, they call it."
Murray, who took some issue with the league's smaller chest protectors, says the equipment is not the issue. "When you're taking body checks, it's pretty much the same."
Short of going all Billy Smith or Ron Hextall and slashing anyone who dares venture near their crease, today's more mild-mannered goalies have little recourse but to take a hit to make a save. Last year's strict enforcement of goaltender interference brought about a few cringeworthy examples of goalies embellishing to get calls.
Murray says he doesn't want to be that guy.
"I mean, they want more goals too, right?" he was saying. "They're not going to call much. You just have to stop the puck. If you embellish it and get scored on when you're flopping around, that's not helping."
• Message sent. Message received.
Following his team's lopsided loss to Toronto in which the Penguins looked slow at best, and disinterested at worst, Sullivan put his team through a particularly high-paced 45-minute practice. It featured a lot of Jacques Martin at the whiteboard and a lot of legs-feeds-the-wolf skating. What there wasn't a lot of were smiles or faux goal celebrations.
"High," was how Bryan Rust described the pace. "Little more of a work day. Obviously, not pleased with how we lost three in a row here. Trying to get some work done."
Sullivan said the goal was to get back to basics after the Penguins' longest losing streak of the season.
"I think we've got to try to reinforce the details and the work ethic associated with winning, and that was part of the practice today," he said. "Trying to make sure we get back to basics, that we focus on the process and the details associated with winning. With our team, it starts with skating."
• Sullivan said that Phil Kessel was given a maintenance day. Derick Brassard was out again with a lower-body injury and remains day to day. He has missed the last four games.
• Here are the lines the Penguins used in practice Sunday without Kessel:
Guentzel-Crosby-Simon
Haglelin-Malkin-Hornqvist
Cullen-Sheahan-Rust
(Recchi)-Grant-Sprong
Note: The defensemen alternated in a rotation.
• The Penguins will host the New Jersey Devils at 7:08 p.m. on Monday at PPG Paints Arena. I'll have your coverage beginning with the morning skate at 10:30 a.m.
