Interesting "team" concept..
Posted: Sat Dec 16, 2006 1:08 pm
Central: Murray willing to go the extra mile
Larry Wigge | NHL.com columnist Dec 16, 2006, 9:09 AM EST
Andy Murray has made his mark as a well-prepared and caring head coach.
When Andy Murray went from coaching at Shattuck-St. Mary’s prep school in Faribault, Minn., to head coach of the Los Angeles Kings in mid-June of 1999, he quickly showed he wanted to go the extra mile to make sure that his players knew exactly what he expected from them. To accomplish the feat, Murray nearly traveled the globe to meet his new players face-to-face, which included a trip to Vienna to talk to newcomer Ziggy Palffy and center Jozef Stumpel over pizza and schnitzel.
Unorthodox? Maybe. But Murray wanted to make sure he was as ready as possible for his first head coaching job in the NHL. It wasn’t the first time he had rubbed shoulders with the play-for-pay stars in the NHL, but he knew life as an assistant coach in stints with the Winnipeg Jets, Minnesota North Stars and Philadelphia Flyers wasn’t the same as running the show.
Most young technocrats in the NHL become rigid and hide behind Xs and Os. Murray wanted to be creative and feeling. And to that end, he wanted to discuss goals and team concepts and get input from his new players on what could be done to prevent the kind of breakdowns the Kings had continually suffered through.
While the Kings’ records during Murray’s six-plus seasons in Los Angeles before he was fired late last season were about .500, no one ever said those teams were easy to play against. In fact, players would say they wondered how those teams stayed in contention, when, on most nights, Murray was coaching without star players like Palffy, Jason Allison, Adam Deadmarsh and Luc Robitaille up front or Aaron Miller or someone else on defense. Many members of the 2001 Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche, for instance, remarked how their biggest scare in that playoff run was surviving a seven-game, second-round series against the Kings.
Larry Wigge reports on the Central Division every week throughout the 2006-2007 regular season.
From Winnipeg, to Minnesota, to Philadelphia, to Switzerland, Germany, Faribault and then Los Angeles, Murray left his mark for being well-prepared and caring. He had an edge when necessary, but he was a fair coach. That’s what St. Louis Blues fans will find out, after he replaced Mike Kitchen with the Blues foundering in last place in the NHL and in the throes of a seven-game losing streak December 11.
The Blues didn’t turn things around immediately under Murray, who had done Canadian TV work after he was fired in Los Angeles last season and most recently had been working as a consultant for Montreal Canadiens GM Bob Gainey. Losses by the scores of 3-2 to Chicago and 4-1 at Colorado added to the team’s woes before Murray was ever able to have his face-to-face sit-downs with Blues’ players.
"There were a lot of meetings and a lot of little exercises like the one where he asked us to fill in the blank: ‘When I play my best hockey, I ... ’ " Blackhawks forward Bryan Smolinski recalled after facing the Blues in Murray’s first game. "The Blues will find out that Andy wants his players to be on their toes and think quickly. That’s what that fill-in-the-blank exercise was all about.
"He always talked about how important it was for a team to play together, how each player had to contribute in his own way, how everyone had to be on the same page. He was big on players playing their role and playing it well."
Hockey is creative. It’s a thinking-man’s game. And the Blues will quickly find out that "Andy’s Rules" start with role-playing and team-first, especially playing fast and eliminating mistakes in your own zone to open up opportunities up the ice.
"What this team needs most is a new attitude, a new challenge," Murray said after a 3-2 loss to the Blackhawks. "Coaching is all about eliminating excuses, giving people reasons for success rather than failure. I’ll never challenge a player’s pride or courage, because without pride and courage they wouldn’t be playing in the National Hockey League. But I will challenge their work ethic and commitment."
Murray, who had never taken a coaching job in-season, hopes that the Blues' real pride and work ethic will be seen in an important home-and-home series with the Central Division-leading Nashville Predators Dec. 16-17. Even before his face-to-face meetings, Murray sent a couple messages to the team, when he started 2004 No. 1 pick Marek Schwarz in his first NHL game in goal against the Blackhawks and then benched former Rookie of the Year defenseman Barret Jackman in the team’s second game in Colorado.
The new coach suggested he would have to learn on the fly in St. Louis under the circumstances of coming in with the team already in a 7-17-4 hole. He equated the roles he would have for his new players with them being part-owners of a big business and needing more of a commitment from each to make the whole succeed.
"They're all running their own companies, just like I'm running my company," Murray said. "We work within a team framework and structure, but right now there're a lot of individuals in there whose companies are going bankrupt because they're not playing hard enough."
It’s all about reality, accountability, raising expectations.
Murray is the third new coach in the Central Division this season, following Ken Hitchcock, who replaced Gerard Gallant in Columbus, and Denis Savard, who replaced Trent Yawney in Chicago. And Murray had his job cut out for him, because the Blue Jackets recently went on a five-game winning streak under Hitchcock and the Blackhawks were 6-0-3 in their first nine games under Savard.
"Coaching has never been Pollyanish," Hitchcock told me after Kitchen’s last game. "It’s real, not make believe. Anyone could come in here and make things better short-term, but building something with a solid foundation is altogether different. It takes a big commitment from the guys in that locker room and a lot of communication from the coach."
"It’s all about changing philosophies and responsibilities," said Savard. "If a player makes a mistake, I pat him on the back and tell him a better way to make the play. Lord knows there are enough negative things they have to face. I want them to work hard and have fun doing it."
Murray knows he has to go the extra mile to get the struggling Blues on track for this season and down the road.
After the team’s first game, veteran defenseman Jay McKee, who has missed most of the season with leg and finger injuries after helping the Buffalo Sabres get within one game of the Stanley Cup finals last spring, shook Murray’s hand and said, "Andy is already hoarse from explaining what his philosophy on life in hockey is all about and yelling encouragement to us. He’s asking for us to make more of an investment in our team, which is a good way of getting us to think as a team."
The newcomers that owner Dave Checketts and new team president John Davidson brought in during the off-season, like McKee, Dan Hinote, Manny Legace and Bill Guerin, should be the equivalent of Adam Foote, Sergei Fedorov and Fredrik Modin in Columbus -- all Stanley Cup winners elsewhere --that Hitchcock appealed to. But they, too, are new. I wonder what they would say if Murray springs that fill in the blank, ‘When I play my best hockey, I ... ’ exercise?
The landscape of the Central Division has certainly changed in the last month. So far, so good, in Chicago and Columbus. In St. Louis, it’s a new game, new structure, new framework and new challenge for the Blues, whose major goal for this season is to create a winning foundation, one that will help the future of the team like defenseman Erik Johnson, center T.J. Oshie, Schwarz, defenseman Roman Polak, centers Patrick Berglund, Carl Soderberg and Tomas Kana and defensemen like Jonas Junland and Alexander Hellstrom and others can fit into and show off their skills.
"When this season is over, I want Dave Checketts and John Davidson to say, ‘Now I’ve got the framework of a team that we can grow on ... with a hard-working, hard-to-play against philosophy in this locker room and on the ice,’ " Murray told me. "I plan to have the key that opens the doors at practice each day and locks the door at night. I want the players to know that this coaching staff can ensure them that we’re going to do our best to give them the opportunity to be successful because we’re all well-prepared to eliminate mistakes and encourage creativity and productivity."
It’s all a part of Andy Murray’s philosophy of going the extra mile to ensure success, without the pizza and schnitzel ... for now.
Larry Wigge | NHL.com columnist Dec 16, 2006, 9:09 AM EST
Andy Murray has made his mark as a well-prepared and caring head coach.
When Andy Murray went from coaching at Shattuck-St. Mary’s prep school in Faribault, Minn., to head coach of the Los Angeles Kings in mid-June of 1999, he quickly showed he wanted to go the extra mile to make sure that his players knew exactly what he expected from them. To accomplish the feat, Murray nearly traveled the globe to meet his new players face-to-face, which included a trip to Vienna to talk to newcomer Ziggy Palffy and center Jozef Stumpel over pizza and schnitzel.
Unorthodox? Maybe. But Murray wanted to make sure he was as ready as possible for his first head coaching job in the NHL. It wasn’t the first time he had rubbed shoulders with the play-for-pay stars in the NHL, but he knew life as an assistant coach in stints with the Winnipeg Jets, Minnesota North Stars and Philadelphia Flyers wasn’t the same as running the show.
Most young technocrats in the NHL become rigid and hide behind Xs and Os. Murray wanted to be creative and feeling. And to that end, he wanted to discuss goals and team concepts and get input from his new players on what could be done to prevent the kind of breakdowns the Kings had continually suffered through.
While the Kings’ records during Murray’s six-plus seasons in Los Angeles before he was fired late last season were about .500, no one ever said those teams were easy to play against. In fact, players would say they wondered how those teams stayed in contention, when, on most nights, Murray was coaching without star players like Palffy, Jason Allison, Adam Deadmarsh and Luc Robitaille up front or Aaron Miller or someone else on defense. Many members of the 2001 Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche, for instance, remarked how their biggest scare in that playoff run was surviving a seven-game, second-round series against the Kings.
Larry Wigge reports on the Central Division every week throughout the 2006-2007 regular season.
From Winnipeg, to Minnesota, to Philadelphia, to Switzerland, Germany, Faribault and then Los Angeles, Murray left his mark for being well-prepared and caring. He had an edge when necessary, but he was a fair coach. That’s what St. Louis Blues fans will find out, after he replaced Mike Kitchen with the Blues foundering in last place in the NHL and in the throes of a seven-game losing streak December 11.
The Blues didn’t turn things around immediately under Murray, who had done Canadian TV work after he was fired in Los Angeles last season and most recently had been working as a consultant for Montreal Canadiens GM Bob Gainey. Losses by the scores of 3-2 to Chicago and 4-1 at Colorado added to the team’s woes before Murray was ever able to have his face-to-face sit-downs with Blues’ players.
"There were a lot of meetings and a lot of little exercises like the one where he asked us to fill in the blank: ‘When I play my best hockey, I ... ’ " Blackhawks forward Bryan Smolinski recalled after facing the Blues in Murray’s first game. "The Blues will find out that Andy wants his players to be on their toes and think quickly. That’s what that fill-in-the-blank exercise was all about.
"He always talked about how important it was for a team to play together, how each player had to contribute in his own way, how everyone had to be on the same page. He was big on players playing their role and playing it well."
Hockey is creative. It’s a thinking-man’s game. And the Blues will quickly find out that "Andy’s Rules" start with role-playing and team-first, especially playing fast and eliminating mistakes in your own zone to open up opportunities up the ice.
"What this team needs most is a new attitude, a new challenge," Murray said after a 3-2 loss to the Blackhawks. "Coaching is all about eliminating excuses, giving people reasons for success rather than failure. I’ll never challenge a player’s pride or courage, because without pride and courage they wouldn’t be playing in the National Hockey League. But I will challenge their work ethic and commitment."
Murray, who had never taken a coaching job in-season, hopes that the Blues' real pride and work ethic will be seen in an important home-and-home series with the Central Division-leading Nashville Predators Dec. 16-17. Even before his face-to-face meetings, Murray sent a couple messages to the team, when he started 2004 No. 1 pick Marek Schwarz in his first NHL game in goal against the Blackhawks and then benched former Rookie of the Year defenseman Barret Jackman in the team’s second game in Colorado.
The new coach suggested he would have to learn on the fly in St. Louis under the circumstances of coming in with the team already in a 7-17-4 hole. He equated the roles he would have for his new players with them being part-owners of a big business and needing more of a commitment from each to make the whole succeed.
"They're all running their own companies, just like I'm running my company," Murray said. "We work within a team framework and structure, but right now there're a lot of individuals in there whose companies are going bankrupt because they're not playing hard enough."
It’s all about reality, accountability, raising expectations.
Murray is the third new coach in the Central Division this season, following Ken Hitchcock, who replaced Gerard Gallant in Columbus, and Denis Savard, who replaced Trent Yawney in Chicago. And Murray had his job cut out for him, because the Blue Jackets recently went on a five-game winning streak under Hitchcock and the Blackhawks were 6-0-3 in their first nine games under Savard.
"Coaching has never been Pollyanish," Hitchcock told me after Kitchen’s last game. "It’s real, not make believe. Anyone could come in here and make things better short-term, but building something with a solid foundation is altogether different. It takes a big commitment from the guys in that locker room and a lot of communication from the coach."
"It’s all about changing philosophies and responsibilities," said Savard. "If a player makes a mistake, I pat him on the back and tell him a better way to make the play. Lord knows there are enough negative things they have to face. I want them to work hard and have fun doing it."
Murray knows he has to go the extra mile to get the struggling Blues on track for this season and down the road.
After the team’s first game, veteran defenseman Jay McKee, who has missed most of the season with leg and finger injuries after helping the Buffalo Sabres get within one game of the Stanley Cup finals last spring, shook Murray’s hand and said, "Andy is already hoarse from explaining what his philosophy on life in hockey is all about and yelling encouragement to us. He’s asking for us to make more of an investment in our team, which is a good way of getting us to think as a team."
The newcomers that owner Dave Checketts and new team president John Davidson brought in during the off-season, like McKee, Dan Hinote, Manny Legace and Bill Guerin, should be the equivalent of Adam Foote, Sergei Fedorov and Fredrik Modin in Columbus -- all Stanley Cup winners elsewhere --that Hitchcock appealed to. But they, too, are new. I wonder what they would say if Murray springs that fill in the blank, ‘When I play my best hockey, I ... ’ exercise?
The landscape of the Central Division has certainly changed in the last month. So far, so good, in Chicago and Columbus. In St. Louis, it’s a new game, new structure, new framework and new challenge for the Blues, whose major goal for this season is to create a winning foundation, one that will help the future of the team like defenseman Erik Johnson, center T.J. Oshie, Schwarz, defenseman Roman Polak, centers Patrick Berglund, Carl Soderberg and Tomas Kana and defensemen like Jonas Junland and Alexander Hellstrom and others can fit into and show off their skills.
"When this season is over, I want Dave Checketts and John Davidson to say, ‘Now I’ve got the framework of a team that we can grow on ... with a hard-working, hard-to-play against philosophy in this locker room and on the ice,’ " Murray told me. "I plan to have the key that opens the doors at practice each day and locks the door at night. I want the players to know that this coaching staff can ensure them that we’re going to do our best to give them the opportunity to be successful because we’re all well-prepared to eliminate mistakes and encourage creativity and productivity."
It’s all a part of Andy Murray’s philosophy of going the extra mile to ensure success, without the pizza and schnitzel ... for now.