Andy Come Home
  

They said that he took too much credit when the team won and doled out too much blame to the players when they lost. They said that he was better off in college, when the roster turned over every four years. They said that veterans pushed back on things like posting inspirational slogans in the locker room. They said for all his wins, the Kings had missed the playoffs in consecutive seasons; he had never taken the team past the second round of the playoffs and his message had been tuned out.

If you'd ask any Kings fan today, they'd be willing to sign in a heartbeat for an 89 point season (LA's ending total last year). Not only have the Kings played surprisingly bad under veteran coach Marc Crawford, they've morphed into the worst defensive team in the league.

Murray, who was killing time scouting for the Montreal Canadiens, had passed on the NCAA Division I coaching job at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. over the summer and was the runner-up for the Columbus Blue Jackets gig that went to Ken Hitchcock earlier this season (he's probably better off).

On December 11, 2006, he heeded the call from the St. Louis management team of Dave Checketts, John Davidson and Larry Pleau and accepted the head coaching role of the Blues. Murray replaced nice guy, but overwhelmed Mike Kitchen (to be fair, Kitchen really never should have had the job in the first place), and took over a team that was slugging along in the basement of the NHL's Western Conference.
 

Despite a recent Sporting News cover story demarcating the Blues as the worst franchise in the NHL, Murray's fresh outlook and discipline has worked. The new tone has invigorated veterans like Guerin, Doug Weight and Dallas Drake and will educate youngsters like power forward David Backes.

I spoke one on one with Weight, one of the game's best guys, after the Kings victory and he freely admitted that Murray has been vital in this team's resurgence.

"Even guys like me need a confidence boost from time to time. Andy put it to the veterans in the room in front of the younger players and it put a lot of pressure on us to produce," the fifteen year vet and Stanley Cup winner conveyed.

So a good deal of attention was brought to the otherwise inconsequential Kings-Blues matchup last Thursday in Los Angeles.

Murray, often guarded in his comments to the media, confessed that "it's obviously more than just the next game. You can't spend the next seven years of your life in one organization and be around that long and not care. I loved every minute of being with the Kings, so it's going to be special going in there, for sure."

I covered Murray for the entire duration of his tenure in Los Angeles and while he wasn't the most controversial coach I've spoken with, current Kings head man Crawford and his innocuous comments makes Andy look like Bill Parcells.

Truth be told, his personality may be better suited for the Midwest, he never forgave the big city scribes for calling him a "prep school coach" when the unknown coach was installed by then-GM Dave Taylor to coach the Kings.

I learned over the years that Murray was both a proud and sensitive man and always put family first. To strike home that point, he almost lost his life skidding off an icy Midwestern road going to see one of his sons play a prep game during an All Star break a few years back.

In the post game media scrums in the depths of Staples Center, you often saw family members waiting with big smiles as the coach concluded his debrief. Despite being a driven individual, he spent all his spare time (what little he had) with family. Although he coached seven years in LA, he never bought a home, hell, he never even rented an apartment because as you see, home is where your family is. And the day he was whacked by the Kings, he appeared at the practice facility, showing class and pride, answering all the difficult questions while vowing, "I'll be back coaching soon."

So when they dropped the puck at Casa del Staples last Thursday, it certainly was much more Game 46 for a 12th place Blues team. It was a little redemption, a little satisfaction and certainly a little revenge served up in a nice little package for the man in the suit behind the St. Louis bench, because a man that's so competitive in nature must be satisfied with a perfect 3-0 record against the team that let him go. Murray claims that the Kings are "his second favorite team" in the Western Conference, but I'll submit to you (though Murray would never admit it) the explanation for that affirmation is that all the other teams are tied for first.

We're dealing with an extremely prideful man who takes his team's failures personally, so the small accomplishment of the Blues and Kings switching places in the standings certainly gives him satisfaction when he settles into his hotel room in St. Louis at night.

"That's the one mistake I made in Los Angeles. I'm going to buy a house in St. Louis. I was in LA for seven years, had I bought a house when I first got there (with the explosion of the real estate market), I would have made a ton of money," he joked after the game.

He looked well rested and at home even though he was in unusual territory at the other end of the hallway in front of the visiting locker room. He was given to a little reminiscing as he hung around with the diminishing media scrum thirty minutes after the final horn, "my greatest memory of Los Angeles will always be the day Dave Taylor and Tim Leiweke called and offered me the job. The first opportunity to coach in the NHL is a moment I'll never forget."

Are the Blues contenders for a playoff spot? No, not really. Even with their current hot streak, they're sitting eight points out of the eighth position, moreover, they have three teams between them and last qualifier, the Minnesota Wild. Catching one team in the NHL scramble is difficult enough, surpassing four teams would be a pretty neat trick.

Even Murray admits, "if we were behind one team, I'd be looking at the numbers. But with four teams in front of us, it's not realistic."

So if the St. Louis Blues don't make it to the second season, it won't be from lack of effort from their coach.
 

Dennis Bernstein, the man behind SCORE! Media, is a columnist for TheFourthPeriod.com and the Los Angeles Correspondent for The Fourth Period Magazine.