Kings Make a Very Brady Selection in Fifth Round

On the day they all became the Brady Bunch, the Kings used a fifth-round pick Sunday to draft the 18-year-old son of Coach Andy Murray.

Brady Murray, a 5-foot-9, 165-pound center from Faribault, Minn., was the 152nd player taken in the two-day, nine-round entry draft at Nashville.

Asked what he knew about the kid, his father said, “He’s got a nice mother.”

He’s also got a nice scoring touch. Playing last season for the Salmon Arm Silverbacks, a Canadian junior team co-owned by his father, Murray registered 42 goals and 59 assists in 59 games. Next month he’ll participate in the Kings’ development camp for the fourth year in a row and next season he’ll play for one of college hockey’s premier programs at North Dakota.

“He wasn’t drafted because of me,” his father said Sunday from Nashville. “He was drafted because he’s a good player.”

The oldest of Andy and Ruth Murray’s three children was ranked 183rd among North American prospects eligible for this year’s draft by the league’s Central Scouting Service, the main knock against him being his smallish stature.

The Kings rated him higher.

“We felt he was the best player available when we picked there,” General Manager Dave Taylor said from Nashville. “Obviously, we know him. We’ve had him at a few of our development camps; he hasn’t looked out of place.”

His mother was excited.

Asked if she were apprehensive about her son possibly playing for his father in a few years, she said from Faribault, “Brady’s gone to the camps in the summers and it’s been fine. Andy’s his coach; he doesn’t even think of him as his father when he’s in the camps, so he can kind of separate that. And that’s probably as much exposure as he’s going to have to him for the next few years anyway.”

Or ever, perhaps.

“It’s so far down the line,” she said, “and to think that Andy might still be coaching the Kings at that point would be kind of a far reach, I would think.”

Said Taylor: “That thought never even crossed our minds.”

Brady, meanwhile, couldn’t have been happier. He said the Nashville Predators and Atlanta Thrashers also had shown interest, but “this is where I wanted to end up. I would have been disappointed if I hadn’t been picked by the Kings.”

Also picked by the Kings on Sunday: center Esa Pirnes of Oulu, Finland, in the sixth round; goaltender Matt Zaba of Yorkton, Canada, and center Mike Sullivan of Scarborough, Canada, in the eighth; and right wing Martin Guerin of Manchester, N.H., no relation to Bill Guerin of the Dallas Stars, in the ninth.

The Mighty Ducks also took five players Sunday: defenseman Nathan Saunders of Charlottetown, Canada, in the fourth round; left wing Andrew Miller of Dover, N.J., in the sixth; center Dirk Southern of Winnipeg, Canada, in the seventh; defenseman Shane O’Brien of Port Hope, Canada, in the eighth; and defenseman Ville Mantymaa of Seinajoki, Finland, in the ninth.