The Pittsburgh Penguins pulled starting goalie Marc-Andre Fleury after he allowed four goals on nine shots in less than 13 minutes of work Wednesday in a 5-1 loss to the Ottawa Senators in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals.
Matt Murray replaced Fleury and saw his first action in the 2017 playoffs.
"They came hard, like we expected," Fleury said, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "They're back home. They had a couple of weird bounces, lucky bounces."
Murray had been penciled in as the team's starting goaltender at the start of the playoffs but suffered a lower-body injury in warm-ups before Game 1 of the team's first-round series against the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said he hasn't considered which goaltender would start Game 4 on Friday in Ottawa.
"It's tough when you give up that many goals in the first period, you don't really give yourself or your team a chance in the game," Sullivan said. "It wasn't like we gave up a lot of scoring chances, we didn't, but they all seemed to go in the net.
"For me, the takeaway is, you can't lose the first period by four goals and think you're going to win."
Murray served as the team's goalie last postseason, which ended with the Penguins hoisting the Stanley Cup.
"It felt good," Murray said about Wednesday night, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "Not the ideal circumstances by any means, but it felt good to try and shake some rust off a little bit. I definitely felt like I hadn't played in about four weeks. It was good to get that out of the way, and it felt good to get back out there."
The Senators have a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven series.
Fleury was 18-10-7 this season for the Penguins with a .909 save percentage. He started one playoff game during the Penguins' run last spring. He was the hero of Pittsburgh's Game 7 victory over Detroit in the 2009 Stanley Cup finals.
Information from ESPN's Craig Custance and The Associated Press was used in this report.