Murray Is Eager to Return

King Coach Andy Murray turned down an offer from a Canadian television network to provide in-studio analysis of the Olympic hockey tournament, opting to spend the NHL’s Olympic break at home with his family.

“But I didn’t expect to spend it quite like this,” Murray said Tuesday from his home in Faribault, Minn., where he is recovering after suffering four broken ribs, a concussion, a separated left shoulder and numerous cuts and scrapes in a single-car accident early Friday morning outside Sparta, Wis.

Although still stiff and sore under a shoulder and chest brace, and sporting the stitches that were required to close two cuts on his forehead and another on his right wrist, Murray said he felt much better after a painful weekend and was eager to get back to work.

He is scheduled to fly into Los Angeles tonight and said he will be “back at full power” Thursday morning, when the Kings return to practice in preparation for the resumption of their season Tuesday night at Columbus, Ohio.

“I don’t have to hit anybody or take any shots or block any shots or anything like that,” Murray said. “What I have to do compared to what the players do, I could be a lot worse off than this and still do it....

“Nothing at all will change.”

Early Friday morning, however, almost everything changed.

Driving a late-model Ford truck he had given his older son, Braden, Murray, 50, was en route from Faribault to Madison, Wis., to watch the 17-year-old play in a high school hockey tournament when he encountered a patch of ice on Interstate 90 about four miles east of Sparta.

Traveling at about 65 mph, the truck slid off the highway, crashed through a wire fence and rolled several times down an embankment through a wooded area, landing with its wheels up about 300 feet from the icy interstate.

A tree stopped it only a few feet before it would have plunged into a shallow trout stream, Monroe County Sheriff Chuck Amundson said Tuesday.

Murray’s truck, reduced to scrap after the 6 a.m. accident, was the first of about “four or five” vehicles that skidded off the roadway within about a 15-minute span after an early morning storm had “glazed” the highway, Amundson said.

“There were cars going off right and left,” the sheriff said.

Murray, though, was the only person injured. He kicked out a window, crawled out of the wreckage and made his way back up to the pavement.

Said Murray: “If you saw my truck and you saw me, there’s no comparison. I probably shouldn’t have been able to get out of it.”

After being treated at St. Mary’s Hospital in Sparta, Murray insisted on attending a game in Sleepy Eye, Minn., involving his younger son, 12-year-old Jordan.