Matt Murray hopes to follow in Matt Murray’s footsteps.
Wait, what?
Penguins fans are quite familiar with the older Murray, Pittsburgh’s two-time Stanley Cup winning goalie. But, during the Penguins’ development camp this week at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex, it’s another Matt Murray wearing a Penguins sweater.
The younger Murray is a rising junior goalie at the University of Massachusetts, where he helped lead the Minutemen to a national runner-up showing at the Frozen Four.
He has heard the jokes and, considering he shares a name with a more popular Penguins goalie, is taking it all in stride.
“I hear it a lot,” he said. “It’s quite common in my daily life. It’s fun, I’m getting used to it and it’s a good topic of conversation. I don’t mind too much.
“At the end of the day, I don’t think the name really matters. I’d just love to play for this organization one day.”
“He sent me a message back when I was 18, saying good luck in the draft. It was a really mature move of him and it was great to have something like that happen for me at that age.”
Murray posted a 2.11 goals against average and .919 save percentage for UMass this past season, playing in 27 games and splitting time with fellow sophomore Filip Lindberg, a seventh-round draft pick of the Minnesota Wild this year.
“It was a good sophomore season,” he said. “Our team had a lot of success. I had a great group of guys in front of me and that made my job a lot easier through the year.”
As a collegiate player, Murray had options as to where he would participate in a development camp, but Pittsburgh was seemingly an easy choice.
“I had other offers, but the way Pittsburgh had approached me, as an organization, and the respect that they showed to me early on in the season, it was a no-brainer to come here,” he said.
“Moving forward, I just want to make sure I’m getting better and better every day. Being out here with the top guys in college and all the top draft picks, it’s a great environment for me to get better and work on that stuff.”