Douglas Murray brought to Calgary on tryout, stretch run, not playoffs

The Calgary Flames seem to be embracing this whole advanced stat outlier thing to a major degree. It’s almost like we’re being trolled by them – mostly with the announcement that Douglas Murray would join the team on a tryout basis. He had played eight games with the Cologne Sharks in Germany.

He’s 6-foot-3, 245 pounds, 35 years old, been out of the league for a year and slow as molasses. But man, can he hit! And boy would he play like Mark Giordano on Calgary’s blueline … not! In Murray’s last fullish season in 2011-12 his SAT relative percentage on the Sharks was a minus-6.9. In 2010-11 he was at mins-2.6. He’s never been a great advanced stat guy, never been a solid offensive player.

But he is enormous … and what an awesome penalty killer. But this would simply be for the stretch run, since Murray signed after the playoffs.

According to Sportsnet's Mark Spector, Murray said he has lost 15 pounds. So maybe he's a little more nimble?

You can never have too many defensemen in this league, especially if you’re trying to make the playoffs. But weren’t there a few better options than Murray at least to take a look at?

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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper

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