Reporter provides the latest information on the Matt Murray situation in Toronto

Since the beginning of the off-season, it was expected that the Leafs would buy out the final year of Matt Murray's contract as Joseph Woll had done enough in his short time with the Leafs to essentially win the backup role to Ilya Samsonov.

The Leafs did not buy Murray out during the first buyout window for what was reported as "insurance reasons", in case they could not come to terms with Samsonov or the arbitration award was too high. Following Samsonov's arbitration award, many believed Murray would be placed on waivers when the second window opened, however, that was not the case. The Leafs surprised everyone when they instead placed Murray on LTIR for the upcoming season.

On the most recent episode of The Leaf Report, Jonas Siegel and James Mirtle touched on the situation and explained what they believe happened.

"The Leafs aren't saying anything about Murray and where he's atHis camp isn't saying anything as well. It reminds me a bit of the (Joffrey) Lupul situation," said Mirtle. "The guy goes away, they say he's hurt and they spend the $4.6M they gained from it and well see if Murray tries to make a comeback a year from now."


Mirtle continued by explaining how the league handled the situation, saying "I reached out and talked to the league and said 'are you looking at this?' and they basically said teams have to file medical documentation when someone goes on LTIR and there's really only an investigation if the league thinks there's something funny there. The last I heardthe league wasn't doing any kind of investigation. The thing agents and teams have said over the years is that most guys that have been in the NHL 8-10 years the way Murray has and have had as many injuries as he has, is it's not that hard to find an injury to point to and say this guy shouldn't be playing."

Murray missed time due to 3 separate injuries last season with ankle, adductor and concussion issues, but was cleared to play during the Leafs' second round series against Florida. When the news broke that he was being placed on LTIR, many people questioned how he could go from being healthy enough to play to being injured. The simple answer there is that there is a difference between being healthy enough to play in the playoffs and being fully healthy. Placing Murray on LTIR was the ideal situation for the Leafs as a buyout would have costed them cap space that they don't have the next two seasons and trading him would have required a sweetener of some sort, another thing they don't have much of, to take on Murray's $8M in salary.