Watching Pens tonight

and the video tribute to Matt Murray has me thinking of Tuitt.

Murray has never been the the same after his father passed away. He was really close to his father and his play has diminished since then. Two-time Cup winning goalie to just being in the league at this point.

Maybe related, maybe not, but I can't help thinking how these things effect people differently and then think about Tuitt. In Murray's case, he's still playing, but maybe in Tuitt's case he just can't.

 

I'm not qualified to say whether his father's death affected his play or not but Murray benefited from being on a stacked team. He was able to turn it on when the games mattered but he could never address the two biggest holes in his game. He has a weak glove hand which led to him dropping pucks instead of squeezing it and getting a whistle and he wasn't very good playing the puck out of his net. Some goalies are great at it, they can hold it up, shift direction on it, and play it to their defense while getting back in the crease. Others struggle and usually the nerves get them when they worry about it. Matt was the latter type. Flower struggled with playing the puck his whole career. I felt bad for Matt because early success inflate his salary and when you have a team of superstars something has to give. I hated trading him especially based on the sporadic play of Jarry and Desmith but they had to do something. Sad how he got placed on waviers and no one took a chance on him.