It wasn’t the first time I talked with Bryan Murray nor that last, but whenever his name would come up I always thought of a conversation we had 20 years ago. And it came to mind when the long-time NHL executive died last week at age 74 after a long battle with colon cancer.
I’ll set the scene. It was 1997. It was Detroit. The Wings were up three games to love against Philly and poised to win the Stanley Cup at Joe Louis a couple of nights later. In other words, I was surrounded by a lot of happy people.
I wanted to talk to Murray because he was an important figure in the story unfolding, but I didn’t figure that he’s all sunshine about it and for a couple of good reasons.
For one, his brother Terry was the Flyers’ coach and though the champagne was still on ice he was already being second-guessed about his handling of his tandem in net, Ron Hextall and Garth Snow. Maybe it would have worked if he did have to play them one at a time. Bryan might have anticipated an uncomfortable question or two about his brother’s coaching. This would present a great opportunity to take a jab, noting that years before the Capitals had fired Bryan as their coach and replaced him with his brother. Far less awkward circumstances would drive other NHL execs into the shadows and have them deploying PR types as human shields.
The other reason, though, was what I figured to be the real hanging point: Detroit was going to have the parade without him. That is, a team that Bryan Murray had largely assembled was coming together to be the NHL’s best a few seasons after his departure. When Mike Ilitch brought in Scotty Bowman to work for the Wings, the clock was running on Murray’s tenure as GM. The clock hit midnight at the end of the 1993-94 season. Murray landed on his feet, mind you. He became the GM of the Florida Panthers, who made the Stanley Cup final in his second season, when the club still had that expansion-team smell. A year later, yeah, the Panthers were his team but at some other level so were the Wings.
I tracked Murray down at a league function the night before Game 4 and took a big gulp before bracing him and asking him for a couple of minutes of his time. Any trepidation that I felt turned out to be misplaced. As ever, he had all the time in the world to talk about hockey.
Yeah, he had condolences for Terry, put down the Flyers’ straits to injuries on the blue line and some awful goaltending. These things were self-evident and it wouldn’t matter who was behind the bench for that. There really wasn’t that much to say about it.
He had a lot more enthusiasm when it came to talking about the Wings. No, he wasn’t going to get to raise the Cup, wasn’t going to get his name engraved alongside all the legends, wasn’t going to ride in the parade, but he was happy for a lot of players and people in the Detroit organization that he knew well. And he was proud to have a hand in a championship team even if he wasn’t getting fitted for a ring.
He talked about ducking out on a jogging trail in Helsinki where he met up with Vladimir Konstantinov without his handlers around. About getting Kris Draper for a dollar. And about seeing something in Darren McCarty that no one else did (although even he couldn’t have imagined McCarty would score the Cup-clinching goal in Game 4).
“We brought in a lot of kids,” he said. “We were criticized for bringing in too many Russians, for bringing in Sergei Fedorov, Konstantinov, and [Vyacheslav] Kozlov. People said you couldn’t win with that many Russians. When we brought in Nicklas Lidstrom we were criticized for bringing in a soft European defenceman. We drafted McCarty and [Martin] Lapointe. They’ve all turned out to be pretty good players.”
Saints would be bitter about how it was all playing out, but Murray came by his no-regrets attitude honestly. In his mind, he had a great ride with that team. He just happened not to be around when that team arrived. That’s how it would play out in Anaheim as well, another team he largely assembled that would win a Cup not so long after his departure. And it might turn out that way in Ottawa.
“In Detroit they’ve all bought into sacrificing and playing defence this season, even the star players,” he said. “They didn’t have that in ’95 against New Jersey. Back then some Detroit players were still playing as individuals, trying to beat the trap all by themselves. I don’t think that our teams [back in ’93 and ’94] bought in or were ready to buy in. We had a lot of young players who didn’t realize how much the Stanley Cup meant and how hard it was to win. We weren’t ready.”
It’s not just the NHL, mind you. In all sorts of walks of life, many who have a vision aren’t around when it all comes together. That Bryan Murray understood that, that he could even manage to smile at what would be a very tough time for most, is the best evidence that he saw the big picture. Not just the big picture in the game, but the big picture in life, too.
I was always amazed by the way he stayed on with the Senators after he was diagnosed with his slow-advancing but terminal cancer. Not that he could physically carry on. No, you couldn’t help but be impressed by the dignity he maintained through it all and it would only have been possible because his love of the game ran so deep. And it was a dignity that I first saw when he talked so proudly about a team that used to be his.
You can only hope Bryan Murray’s story doesn’t end here but with a championship sometime down the line. Nothing would make him happier.
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