Will Pittsburgh use Murray or Fleury?

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH

Pittsburgh Penguins coach Mike Sullivan has been stressing for weeks his team has multiple goaltenders capable of taking the franchise to the Stanley Cup.

Might be time to find out if he’s right.

Rookie Matt Murray’s precocious postseason play came to a sudden and abrupt halt in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals on Friday night. Sullivan pulled the 21-year-old after two periods in which the energized Tampa Bay Lightning forced Murray to dig the puck out of the net four times. In came well-rested Marc-Andre Fleury, playing for the first time in seven weeks, a sabbatical that began while he recovered from concussion sustained on March 31 and continued long after he was cleared thanks to Murray’s steadying presence.

Fleury stopped all seven shots he faced in the third as Pittsburgh put together a frantic rally before falling 4-3 as the Lightning evened the entertaining series at 2-2 heading into Game 5 tonight.

Sullivan declined to name a starter on Saturday. The way he sees it, there really are no bad options. In Murray the Penguins have watched their goaltender of the future evolve into the goaltender of the present. In Fleury Pittsburgh has a goaltender whose name is already on the Cup and who handled Murray’s rise with customary class.

“Marc’s been a big part of this team all year,,” Sullivan said. “He’s really helped this team get to the position it’s at with the way he’s played all season. The timing of his injury down the stretch was unfortunate. It’s not a perfect circumstance. But I think that’s the nature of the business we’re in. We just try to make the best decisions and make the most of the situation that we’re in.”

And as flat as Pittsburgh looked over much of the first 40 minutes on Friday to squander a chance to take firm control of things, the Penguins were just as dominant in the third while nearly pulling off a comeback that — if completed — would have delivered an emotional punch Tampa Bay would have found difficult to overcome.

It’s playing with that kind of urgency Pittsburgh will focus on heading home, not who will be in net.

“We know the way we need to play at this point,” forward Matt Cullen said. “We know we didn’t play that way the first half of the game and that’s what cost us.”

And not Murray’s first real statistical stumble since taking over in Game 3 of the opening-round series against the New York Rangers. He gave up four goals on 30 shots, a couple of which he attributed to crazy bounces rather than poor positioning. He’s not going to sweat Sullivan’s call, knowing everything at this point is a game-by-game basis.