Kings’ Murray the Right Coach for Organization

The tile on the floor of the locker room at Staples Center is a little thinner now, worn by the pacing, pacing, pacing of the coach.

Forty-one games, maybe 41 miles, down a 30-foot hall outside the office and back up. Andy Murray on a hike, always to the same destination, always back to the beginning, seeming to step on each tile at the same place at the same time of night.

Rob Blake is told to lead the first stretching exercise, as he was told to lead it when the Kings played Boston in their home opener in October.

With 6:35--not 6:34 or 6:36--left in any intermission, Murray goes to the dressing room to address the Kings.

Always the same. Predictable.

The Kings have been comfortable in that predictability, from Game 1 through Game 82, and the only deviation for Murray when they open their first-round series at Detroit on Thursday is that the hall outside the dressing room at Joe Louis Arena is narrower and a bit shorter.

“He’s been consistent, and that’s the main thing,” said Blake, the Kings’ defenseman and captain who played for Murray with the Canadian national team.

“He has prepared us the same way every night and people understand that. They want it out of a coach. They don’t want a coach changing everything every two weeks or a month, and that’s been the best thing about him. He’s said what he wanted to do from Day 1 and he hasn’t changed from that.”

The posters, the bromides and seemingly trite sayings on the wall of the dressing room at Iceoplex in North Hills during September’s training camp are still around to greet the Kings at Staples Center, and first-time viewers look at them and snicker about the coach who was working with high school kids only a year ago.

But players don’t.

And if the slogans are not yet at the HealthSouth Training Facility, it’s only because the place is so new the Starbucks isn’t open yet.

“They’ll be up there too,” said Dave Taylor, the Kings’ senior vice president and general manager whose leap of faith is responsible for Murray coaching the Kings.

“This is the time of the year that players believe in those cliches. You’ll hear them over and over again.”

Players are comfortable in what they know, and they know Murray now.

The coach is still purest western Canada, unaffected by any of the trappings of his new surroundings. There is no Hollywood-moussed ‘do for the sandy hair, no ego wall in his office. The off-the-rack suits he came to town with still serve. He learned to get comfortable in the company car, a Jaguar convertible that had been driven by his predecessor, Larry Robinson, who was fired with a year left on the lease. But Murray would prefer a pickup truck.

“He’s exactly what we thought we were getting when we got him,” said Tim Leiweke, the team’s president. “He’s the same guy today that he was the first time I met him. . . . I don’t think it will be any different two years from now. This man is very organized, very focused, he knows where he wants to be every day, every month, every year.”

Where that is was outlined in the interview process, when Taylor received “the Murray Manifesto.” It’s a blueprint for success, based on what worked with kids, NHL players toiling for national teams and not-ready-for-prime-time players in Europe.

It was on paper, not stone, but after time spent around Murray you get the idea that was only because no chisel was handy.

“I think as I said at the beginning, I wouldn’t know how to do it any differently,” Murray said. “The way I’ve coached the Kings is the way I’ve coached every team I’ve ever coached. Things have adjusted somewhat along the way, but the basic principles have stayed the same all the way through my coaching career.”

The posters were up at Shattuck-St. Mary’s prep school a year ago, and they were around to greet the Canadian national team and Brandon Travelers of the Manitoba Junior A Hockey League and Brandon University team. They were printed in German in Germany.

And the coach who gave Luc Robitaille and Ziggy Palffy their marching orders is the same coach who told Shattuck kids last year to beat the Chicago Chill in a kids’ hockey tournament.

“It’s not like I could have come in here and tried to do things differently than I’ve done it,” Murray said. “I know at times some people probably think I’m too intense, but that’s just the way I am and I can’t be somebody I’m not.”

The question was asked in September: “Can you keep up this pace, can you be this intense and demanding of players for 82 games?”

The answer in April is a resounding yes.

“You expect your players to play with emotion, passion and energy all the time, and why should pro players be any different?” Murray said. “They shouldn’t be any different.”

The trip to the playoffs, the 39-31-12-4 record, the 94 points that earned the fourth-best mark in franchise history, began with a meeting between Murray and Taylor back in the late spring, when newspapers in Toronto had the Kings hiring Ted Nolan to replace Robinson and newspapers in Southern California figured the new coach would be the Long Beach Ice Dogs’ John Van Boxmeer.

Taylor had given Murray the Kings’ roster and a list of prospects, and Murray had been asked, “Can you make the playoffs with this team?”

If the answer had been no, there’s a good chance Murray would still be at Shattuck-St. Mary’s, coaching kids.

After Murray got the job and answered the who-are-you? questions in a news conference in June, he hit the road to check out the raw materials he had inherited.

The players told him of the factions in the dressing room, of their dislike of Robinson’s tinkering with the lineup.

“He went around to see all of them, even made a trip to Europe, and they all told him the same thing,” Taylor said. “They wanted consistency in the program.”

They learned they had a coach who listened and was a consensus builder. One who made decisions only after getting all the input he could absorb. One who asked everybody’s opinion before separating the wheat from the chaff. One who believed communication went two ways and told his assistants to talk with every player every day.

“We meet every morning as coaches and I’m more of a moderator of these meetings,” Murray said. “I throw ideas out and ask that these guys give me what the solutions are. I moderate and listen and sometimes I like what they’re saying, sometimes I’ll throw in something else. But even if I don’t think the idea is a good one, I’ll throw it out for discussion.”

The were challenges. Sean O’Donnell tried to ease his way into training camp, as he always had, only to be told by Murray that he was a potential leader and needed to push himself harder as an example to others.

Center Bryan Smolinski tried to feel his way into the lineup with his new team and was told that he wasn’t working hard enough, then moved from a scoring line to a checking line as a message to him and everybody else.

“They wanted more accountability,” Taylor said of the Kings. “Maybe sometimes they got more accountability than they wanted, but they asked for it.”

After working for a coach who threw out pucks and told them to scrimmage, they learned the new guy was an organizational demon, with a drill for every occasion and a reason for every drill.

Asked how long the morning skate was at St. Louis before the team’s second game, Murray answered “24 minutes 30 seconds. It would have been 24 minutes, but Luc had to skate a lap.”

That was for being the last one to gather around the coach at a whistle. It was an object lesson then. It will be again today at practice at Joe Louis Arena.

“I’m fortunate,” Murray said. “We’ve won more games than we’ve lost this year. I guess the whole thing is that I don’t think I’ve really changed my philosophy and way of doing things.”

It may well be the reason the Kings are still playing hockey when many others are sitting at home.

KINGS vs. DETROIT RED WINGS

Best-of-seven series

Game 1: Thursday at Detroit,

4:30 p.m., Fox Sports Net, ESPN

Full Schedule: Page 9

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HOT DOG

The hottest goalie won’t be in the NHL playoffs. He’ll be with the Long Beach Ice Dogs. Page 9