Former LA Kings Head Coach Andy Murray on Hockey, Family and Education

(Photo credit: Harry How/Getty Images)

Aside from a brief postseason appearance in 1998, the Los Angeles Kings had spent the latter part of the 1990’s as a non-playoff team — a far cry from how they entered the decade.

Led by Wayne Gretzky, the Kings entered the 1990’s as Stanley Cup contenders, booking the franchise’s first trip to the Cup Finals in 1993. Since then, though, the Kings struggled both on and off the ice. From a lacklustre product on the ice to ownership issues off of it, the once-intimidating Los Angeles Kings seemed to offer not more than a quiet whimper during the mid- to late-90’s.

In 1999, though, a change was made behind the bench — their fourth in seven years. This time, though, the Kings hired Andy Murray who, while having already served at the NHL level as an assistant coach, arrived in Los Angeles with a wealth of experience on the international stage.

Murray’s contributions would help lead the Kings to three playoff appearances in his first three seasons before keeping his team consistently competitive despite losing an exorbitant amount of man-games to injury in the latter part of his tenure.

Now the head coach of the Western Michigan University men’s team — a post he’s held since 2011 — Murray has fond memories of his experiences in his previous coaching stops, especially Los Angeles.

I recently had the privilege of speaking with Andy Murray, who shared his experiences coaching the Kings, which included a stunning playoff upset of the Detroit Red Wings in 2001, and the lessons he learned from his tenure with the club.

Coming to Los Angeles

Hired in the summer of 1999, Andy Murray took over a team fresh off missing the playoffs for the fifth time in six seasons and last in the Pacific Division for the third time in four seasons. Nevertheless, Murray and the Kings were both looking for a fresh start.

I began by asking the former Kings coach what changes he brought to his new team.

“In terms of changes, I don’t know if I perceived them as changes. It was just the way that I was used to coaching in the way that I did things,” Murray said. “I had watched tape of the Kings the year before and so on– but to me, I was just coaching the way that I felt you should coach.”

For Murray, though, mapping out what each player brought to the team made his start with the Kings an auspicious one.

“I certainly defined roles on the team, letting players know what I believed their skill set allowed them to do,” the native of Gladstone, Man., explained. “I wanted to emphasize their strengths, I wanted to emphasize the things that they did well in the game and to help us win. So, it was role definement, it was an emphasis on hard work, just making sure that we maximized every shift, short shifts, with intensity. We kept a stopwatch on the bench to really control our shift lengths as I tried to play with a lot of speed and pace.”

While this was his first taste as a head coach, Murray was no stranger to the NHL upon his arrival to Los Angeles.

Between 1989 and 1995, Murray served as an assistant coach with the Philadelphia Flyers, Minnesota North Stars and Winnipeg Jets, spending two seasons with each club. Having reached the Conference Final in 1989 with the Flyers and the Stanley Cup Final two years later with the North Stars, Murray certainly knew what it took to go far in the NHL: a deep desire to succeed with proper leadership.

“I took over a team that was hungry for success,” the veteran coach said. “I just coached the way I think you should coach, tried to communicate a lot with the players and certainly let them know what my opinion was of the way they were playing, and I was pretty direct. I let players know when we were pleased and when we weren’t pleased, as well.”
With the defining of individual roles in place, the Kings front office also did their part in attempting to add to the club’s turnaround.

“The big thing there with the Kings is that we made some good player acquisitions and that helped the Kings a great deal [in 1999-2000], too,” added Murray.

Among those acquisitions was a trade with the New York Islanders — made just days after Murray’s hire — that brought Ziggy Palffy and Bryan Smolinski to the Kings.

While their return to the playoffs in 2000 was brief — being swept in four-straight by the aforementioned Red Wings — Murray’s maiden season in Los Angeles was a successful one, guiding the Kings to a 25-point improvement to finish second in the Pacific Division.

Mr. Spengler Cup

A moniker which was well-earned, Andy Murray became “Mr. Spengler Cup” due to his enormous success at the event.

Between 1984 and 1997, the 69-year-old coached Team Canada six times at the event, winning the gold medal on all six occasions. Murray would also lead Canada to gold in 1997 at the IIHF World Championships and would coach Canada again at the Worlds the following year with a pair of Kings on his roster.

“We had Rob Blake on our team [in 1998], Glen Murray (no relation) and a few other guys, so I had some familiarity with those guys,” remembers Murray.

The year before joining the Kings, though, the veteran coach wanted to spend a year at home with his family.

“I coached Shattuck-St. Mary’s the year before, which was a prep school in Minnesota where my kids were going to school and my son was playing hockey,” Murray continued. “I had a great year there and really enjoyed my time there. Actually, I went from prep school right to the NHL. It surprised everybody. I mean, I had been an international coach with Canada a number of times in the Spengler Cup, coached in the World Championships and the World Cup, but I had taken a year to spend with my family and coach at Shattuck-St. Mary’s and I thought that was a great year to have right before I went to the NHL.”

Murray was also an associate coach for Team Canada at the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, working with future Kings bench boss Marc Crawford.

Frenzy on Figueroa

Entering the 2001 playoffs, the Kings had another date with the Detroit Red Wings.

Having been swept by them the previous year, the Kings looked to be at a bigger disadvantage against the Wings this time around as they had traded captain Rob Blake weeks earlier.

“That was certainly tough when Rob left our team,” Murray admitted. “He’s a good friend, he was a great captain for us and a tremendous, tremendous player. But, those are the kinds of things that you’re not involved in the decision making in those situations. We also lost Steve Reinprecht in that trade.”

While they did lose a future Hall-of-Famer in Blake and a reliable force in Reinprecht, the Kings received a couple of noteworthy players in return — one of which was noted for his timely playoff success against Detroit.

“We got a couple of tremendous players back in Aaron Miller, who played tremendously for us on the blueline that year, and we got Adam Deadmarsh who played very, very well, as well,” Murray continued. “So, certainly those two guys joining our team made a huge difference and we were what we had been the previous season.”

However much his team was dismissed entering the playoffs, though, Andy Murray was not the least bit fazed. Instead, he and his players focused on the drive and determination they had been using all season long, especially late, to push through.

“We were a hard-working, determined group who tried to be a miserable group to play against every game,” noted the former Kings coach. “Our guys worked hard and they practiced hard and we had guys who knew their roles, responsibilities and did a great job of it, so certainly we had a hard-working group.

“We also had Felix Potvin who we brought in as a goaltender and the last 23 games of the season, we only lost five games. We went 13-5-5, so we were playing the best hockey we could have been playing at the end of the season. So, certainly going into the playoffs, we were feeling pretty good about ourselves as a team. We had a lot of great leaders on the team — Mattias Norstrom had become our captain, Ian Laperriere had been such a warrior, a young Eric Belanger stepped up and Luc Robitaille— Luc was Luc, he’s a Hall-of-Famer. We just played good hockey and went into the playoffs feeling good about ourselves.”

The Kings would go on to upset the Red Wings, beating them in six games to win their first playoff series in eight years.
As for two of the members of the 2000-01 Kings, they expressed fond memories of Murray.
“In terms of the clubs that I played with over the course of my NHL career, the Kings were, in terms of playing responsibility and leadership responsibility, the calibre of the team we had and the character we had in that room, it was one of the best fits for me personally during my career,” Stu Grimson told me earlier this year. “An important part of that was that Andy Murray placed a lot of leadership responsibility in my lap.”

2000-01, while it was his lone season with the Kings, was nonetheless memorable for Grimson.

The second player was the aforementioned Adam Deadmarsh, who would later become a coach himself.
“Andy was a professor of the game,” Deadmarsh reflected. “He spent countless hours studying and preparing for the games.”

The former King admitted Murray and his staff attributed to his own coaching style.

“To this day, a lot of what I learned from them I try to implement with the guys I teach,” Deadmarsh continued. “The biggest thing I learned from them was their demeanor towards the player. They expected me to play hard and didn’t have to yell and scream to achieve that. They would show you via video or through conversation on how to compete in a manner that makes you most effective in your role and when you got away from it, they would pull you back in and get you back on track.”

It Takes a Village

While he is certainly deserving of his success with the Kings, which included a then-franchise-record 215 wins as head coach, Andy Murray was quick to admit that there were so many others who helped him achieve said success, especially his coaching staff.

“We had a great goaltending coach in Andy Nowicki. He did a great job,” Murray began. “Mark (Hardy) was a warrior of a player with the Kings. He led the purple-and-gold and was a great addition to help our penalty-killers and our defense. Dave Tippett continued to show, with us and certainly with Dallas, Phoenix and Edmonton, that he was a tremendous person and a great hockey mind. He was responsible for the offensive side of our game. Ray Bennett, who’s still a great assistant coach with the Colorado Avalanche, was with me in L.A. until I left (in 2006) and went to St. Louis (with Murray) as an assistant coach. He was responsible for the technical aspect of our team and he did so much work in terms of our skill development. We had a video coordinator, Bill Gurney, who had been with the Kings forever and Bill was a key part in giving us all the information we needed and did a great job with our tapes, breaking opponents down and so Bill played a big part there, too.”

Murray was also quick to give credit to the club’s front office and ownership, which included Kings’ former captain, and then-general manager, Dave Taylor.

“Dave was just what he was as a player: a solid, determined, hard-working player, and that was the way his management style was, too,” Murray emphasized. “He was always supportive and just helped us in any way that he could — in tough times, he was always there for us.

“We had the energy of (AEG’s then-President and CEO) Tim Leiweke, his energy and enthusiasm, and then you come to Mr. and Mrs. Anschutz, our owners, were tremendous as well. So, we had a lot of things going for us and really, we played in the nicest arena in the National Hockey League in STAPLES Center. That opened while I was there. A lot of positive energy in L.A.”

A Career-Long Education

After making the playoffs again in 2002, the Kings would miss the playoffs for the remainder of Andy Murray’s tenure. That, however, should not be — and frankly, is not — a reflection on the coach.

In fact, during that span, the Kings remained competitive playoff contenders despite losing a record number of man-games to injury. No one would have blamed the Kings for finishing near the bottom of the league standings but Andy Murray would have none of that.

In spite of finishing 14 points out of the final playoff spot, the Kings remained strong, especially on the penalty kill as they finished the season tied for fewest shorthanded goals against.

The Kings would miss the playoffs by 10 points in 2003-04, although they would also lose 629 man-games to injury that season. Murray would be relieved of his duties during the 2005-06 season despite leading the Kings to a very respectable 37-28-5 record at the time of his dismissal.

While his time in Los Angeles may have ended earlier than he would have liked, Murray couldn’t help but reflect fondly on his career behind the Kings’ bench, learning a lot from his coaching stop in southern California.

“I’m 69 now and I’m still learning every day,” Murray said. “As soon as you stop learning, you should stop. I’m just trying to get better. First of all, I’m a small-town Manitoba guy. Living in L.A. was completely different for me and I enjoyed it.”

Murray continued, accentuating arguably the most important skill that has helped progress his coaching career.

“Communication is so important,” stressed the Western Michigan head coach. “To continue to work on communication skills and you have to learn not to complicate things too much and try to simplify things as much as you can. Over-coaching is just as bad as under-coaching, so you’re learning how to manage that as well. I put my time in and I work at my job but most importantly, you really realize how important the people you surround yourself with are in terms of assistance, support staff and everybody. It was just some valuable lessons that you have to learn, as soon as the game is finished, to part with that one and move onto the next one.

“You know, whenever I start feeling sorry for myself because things weren’t going well, I just take a look in the mirror and realize how many other people would love to be doing what I’m doing, to get my butt in gear and to get after it.”

In 480 games with the Kings, Murray compiled a record of 215-175-58(ties)-32(OT losses). His 215 wins was a franchise record that stood until 2017 when it was surpassed by Darryl Sutter.

Taking the Collegiate Route

After his tenure with the Kings wrapped up, Murray moved on to St. Louis where he spent four seasons as the Blues’ head coach.

Following his tenure with the Blues, though, Murray decided to take the collegiate route, largely on the advice of one of his former players.

“There were certainly opportunities after St. Louis to coach in the NHL again but this opportunity came up at Western Michigan University,” Murray said. “Jamal Mayers, who had played for me in St. Louis and Team Canada, had gone to Western Michigan and we had talked about it and told me that I should think about the job. So, I had a conversation with him and came [to WMU]. 

While his conversations with Mayers was certainly a factor, Murray’s decision was made as a desire to try something new.

“You know, it was something that was on my bucket list,” he continued. “I had never coached at the U.S. college level, even though my three kids had all played college hockey in the U.S., but you only live once. You need to try it all and so I came here and (in 2020) just finished my ninth season. I’m going into my 10th year right now and I enjoy it and I enjoy the energy.”

As for how the collegiate game compares to the NHL, the Western Michigan coach hasn’t experienced much of a difference. In fact, it’s just as enjoyable.

“To me, to be honest with you, there’s not a big difference between coaching at the college level and at the pro level,” Murray stated. “We have very good players here and obviously you have the very best players in the National Hockey League. So, to me, I’m doing the things I’ve always done and hopefully doing a number of things better than I’ve done them before. So, I’m continually learning.

“We have our own recruiting staff, we recruit our own players and manage everything, so there’s a little more to [the U.S. college game] than just coaching, but I’ve enjoyed it, we’ve had some good teams and some good players and, just as I did during my time in L.A., I had a lot of good people. I met so many nice boosters with the L.A. Kings and the people in L.A. that I got to know and it’s the same thing here at Western. There are so many people so passionate about the Kings and we have people passionate about Bronco hockey here. I’ve enjoyed both and enjoying continuing to coach.”

The Family Business

En route to making a name for himself in the hockey world, Andy Murray’s three children followed suit. After all three played for the prestigious Shattuck-St. Mary’s, sons Brady (North Dakota) and Jordy (Wisconsin) and daughter Sarah (Minnesota-Duluth) all took the U.S. college route being embarking on their respective pro careers. All three of Murray’s children played professionally in Switzerland while son Brady was drafted by, and played a few games for, the Kings.

“All three of them are very competitive, still involved in the game in different ways,” Murray said of his children. “People used to say to me, ‘Why do your kids play hockey? Did you make them play?’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t make them play. They just had to decide whether they wanted to live with us or not,’ so, I kind of made a joke of it.”

The former Kings coach went on to say, however, that his family was in a good situation during his coaching tenure in Los Angeles.

“They were just so fortunate because they got to stay in Minnesota while I was in L.A.,” Murray continued. “They were going to Shattuck-St. Mary’s, and were happy with the situation, and my wife was great, too. So, I went home whenever I could. They came out to L.A. a lot, just like when I was an assistant coach with other teams. My kids got to skate at the NHL arenas and be around the teams. So, I think it was part of the lifestyle.”

Murray’s daughter, Sarah, has since followed in her dad’s footsteps, embarking on a coaching career.

This past season was Sarah’s first as head coach as Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota. Prior to that, she coached South Korea’s women’s national team, including at the 2018 Olympics.

“Sarah was just playing pro and had a chance to go to Korea,” Murray told me. “They offered her the job as the head coach and she hasn’t looked back.”

As wonderful an opportunity as it was to coach at the Olympics, however, Sarah was met with a tough situation.

“Two weeks before the Olympics, though, she was told that she had to combine her team with the North Korean team,” continued Murray. “After you’ve been working with your team for four years, it was tough. But, she handled it really well and how she handled the media and everything there, I thought, was tremendous.”

During our conversation, it was easy to see, and hear, just how proud Andy Murray was, and is, of each of his children, and for good reason.

Congratulations to the NCHC Herb Brooks Coach of the Year Andy Murray!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/i478X4KpdA

— WMU Hockey (@WMUHockey) March 16, 2017

What started in 1976 with the Brandon Travellers of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League has turned into a long, storied coaching career, capped off by a well-deserving induction into the IIHF Hall of Fame in 2012. Murray even made history in 2007, becoming the first coach in tournament history to win three World Championships, adding to his win in 1997 and his second in 2003.

Andy Murray’s coaching life, however, is far from over.

Yet, while many see — and rightfully so — him as a professor of the game, Andy Murray still considers himself a student as he continues to learn every day. Coaching for so many years at so many different levels, Murray remains a student of the game, in addition to being a humble presence and a consummate gentleman.

They may not have always been the best team on the ice but under Andy Murray, the Los Angeles Kings were a consistently competitive team and one opponents had to fight hard to earn two points against.

Whether their roster was at full health or depleted by injuries, Murray made it a priority that his team was at its best every night. Some may not have liked him or his coaching style but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who disrespected Andy Murray — and that is a testament to not only what he offers as a coach but what he offers as a person, as well.

Kings fans have plenty of great memories from their team’s tenure under the veteran coach and looking back, few, if any, can argue Andy Murray’s influential place in Los Angeles Kings history.

 

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