Ugly rumor circulating about Matt Murray appears to be a total hoax.

There has been an ugly rumor circulating about Pittsburgh Penguins goaltender Matt Murray and I think it is now safe to suggest that this one appears to be completely bogus. 

An image began making the rounds on social media featuring an image of Murray as well as what claimed to be a quote from one of Murray's goaltending coaches in junior hockey. In the quote the supposed coach goes on to rip on fans of the Pittsburgh Penguins, the city itself, as well as fellow Penguins goaltender Tristan Jarry in a tone that seems frankly unbelievable from a coach in junior hockey. As it turns out it seems there was good reason things sounded so unbelievable. 

First here was the quote:

All he hears about everyday is how "Fleury's better." We went out to dinner when I first moved back here... Some kid recognized him and wanted an autograph and a picture. Afterwards, the dad looks right at him and says "You'll never be as good as Fleury and we'll never win anything with you." I just sat there, and Matt says to me "Yeah, that happens 5 or 6 times a day, this city hates me" Over the last two years I've realized how true that is. This town hates this guy, they hate him so bad that Tristan f***ing Jarry seems like a messiah to the people in this town." 

The first thing that stood out to me was the over the top nature of the comment, after all even though Murray has been inconsistent and even bad at times in goal recently he does have two Stanley Cup Championships to his name. The man is a proven winner in spite of his recent struggles and I find it hard to believe he would be routinely accosted by fans who hate him so much they feel the need to let him know. There are clues in the image itself however, for example both the Penguins and the NHL's logos appear at the bottom of the image. Does anyone genuinely believe either the Penguins or the NHL would ever endorse this kind of a message? The word "Coaches" was also spelt "coachs" on the image being circulated, which again indicated to me that this was very much fake news.

Here is the image making the rounds:

I managed to track the source of this quote down to a now deleted tweet, but in spite of the fact that the originator of this has since deleted his own tweet, the image continues to circulate on social media platforms like twitter and Reddit where it is still up at the time of this writing.. No doubt this was an attempt to capitalize on the very real rumors regarding Murray's future in Pittsburgh. Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford recently told The Athletic that he had some tough decisions on the horizon.

“Well,” Rutherford said as per The Athletic, “I’ll say this: If we are going to keep both of them, we’d have to move a few things around on our team. There is a way to do things and to make that work, yes. There are some very, very tough decisions ahead.”

Rutherford acknowledged that trading one of his goaltenders might be an inevitably, but it certainly won't be because of what the aforementioned fake rumor was suggesting.