Opinion | Trouble in the Maple Leafs’ net? Who could have seen this coming?

It’s hard to say which part of the Matt Murray’s early-season sidelining is more alarming for the Maple Leafs.

Maybe it’s that Murray, the goaltender brought aboard in the off-season despite a lengthy and varied history of injury, couldn’t make it through the morning skate of what was to be his second start of the season Saturday, limping off the ice with a groin injury that will keep him out of the lineup at least 10 games.

Or maybe it’s that Murray, even when he seemed perfectly healthy in Wednesday’s season-opening loss in Montreal, looked less than impressive in his Leafs debut, and not only because he allowed four goals on 23 shots to the team that finished last in the league last season. He also spent the evening exposing a high-glove weak spot the Canadiens exploited with head-shaking ease.

Pick your poison, either the latest in a line of injuries or the continuation of a long run of inconsistency, both of which have seen Murray considered expendable by both the Penguins and the Senators in recent years. Any way you look at it, none of it is particularly surprising. Murray has neither been regularly healthy nor consistently competitive in recent years, the foibles of which have made his back-to-back Stanley Cups with the Penguins seem more and more like ancient history.

With Murray now placed on long-term injured reserve, all that was left for Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe was to spin the positives of Murray’s inauspicious beginning in Leafsland.

And there are positives. With the goaltender’s $4.7-million (U.S.) cap hit suddenly removed from Toronto’s tight-to-the-ceiling equation, there was some welcome room to expand the roster, which had consisted of just 20 players for the opening two games of the season, three short of the NHL standard 23. So on the day the Leafs called up Marlies goaltender Erik to fill Murray’s place, they also called up wingers Nick Robertson and Wayne Simmonds. Keefe called the arrivals a “silver lining” to Murray’s sidelining, pointing out that Robertson would have made the team out of training camp if not for Toronto’s cap-strapped situation, and that Simmonds was the “next man up.”

Leave it to the Leafs to tell themselves there’s no problem more forward depth can’t fix.

Which doesn’t say much for the situation in Toronto’s blue paint, where unreliability has become a fact of life going back to the waning days of Frederik Andersen.

“These injuries happen. We’ve dealt with a lot of them when it comes to the goaltenders over the last couple of seasons,” Keefe said after Saturday’s win. “So that’s the reason why we signed two guys.”

In retrospect, clearly two wasn’t enough. And the question is: How long can they wait to find another? After all, the fact that Murray never made it to Saturday night’s opening faceoff shocked precisely nobody in Ottawa. Exactly what he’ll offer if and when he returns is the opposite of bankable.

“Matt, unfortunately here, was just injured all the time,” D.J. Smith, the Senators coach, told reporters this week. “Take nothing away from him, he just was hurt all the time. He had a lot of bad luck.”

The Leafs were already rolling the dice when they replaced last season’s tandem of Jack Campbell and Petr Mrázek with Murray and Ilya Samsonov, the latter a former first-round pick of the Washington Capitals. Now, when you consider that Källgren had an underwhelming save percentage of .888 in 12 starts last season, they’re suddenly placing an even bigger bet on Samsonov.

Not that there are many sure things in an NHL crease beyond the handful of elites. If anyone’s wistful for Campbell, who signed a five-year deal worth $25 million in Edmonton — well, he has allowed seven goals against in about three-and-a-half periods of work for the Oilers. He was chased midway through the opening period of Saturday’s 4-3 loss to the Flames.

At least Samsonov, the 25-year-old Russian, has performed solidly to open the season, winning his second straight start Saturday. He has a .926 save percentage and a 2.00 goals-against average in two games. But, as good as he’s been, he’s also shown a vulnerability to soft goals finding their way through the cracks in his six-foot-three frame. Indeed, part of the reason the Capitals allowed Samsonov to walk in free agency this summer is that, in three seasons with the club, his proneness to such lapses never allowed him to seize their No. 1 job, even as the club begged him to grab it.

He couldn’t win the No. 1 job in Washington. Now he’s been handed it in Toronto, at least for the coming few weeks. Keefe spoke Sunday to the importance of expanding the roster with the presence of Robertson and Simmonds. A 20-man unit didn’t allow for the threat of so much as a healthy scratch. But now, with extras available, Keefe said there will be “more competition and more accountability.”

“I think that’s very healthy for our team. I think that keeps guys honest in terms of wanting to keep their spot,” Keefe said.

But unless can show considerable growth, Samsonov doesn’t figure to have anyone pushing him for starts. Keefe, for his part, spent a few post-practice minutes on Sunday spelling out the gravity of the opportunity.

“Just sort of lay out the plan for him, that he’s going to be busy,” Keefe said, “And because of that it’s just that much more important that he takes care of himself and is ready for the extra load.”

Samsonov’s threshold for heavier work isn’t yet known. He started a career-high 39 games in Washington last season. Before that he had never started more than 22.

“Nothing changes,” Samsonov insisted to reporters. “I said (Saturday), I’m ready all the time. It doesn’t matter. Morning, night, whatever. That’s why you (become a) professional. Nothing changes.”

But while Samsonov said he is so far unaffected by playing amid Toronto’s spotlight — “Here there’s no pressure … I feel comfortable,” he said — he acknowledged that this season is already posing “the hardest challenge” of his career. It has certainly plunged Toronto’s goaltending department into an unenviable limbo.

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