Andy Murray: Former NHL Coach Has Hit The Ice Running At Western Michigan

Leading up to last summer, Andy Murray had not worked with pre-professional hockey players since his one-and-done national championship campaign with Shattuck-St. Mary’s School in 1998-99.

The subsequent decade-long detour through the NHL, interspersed with a few stints of inactivity, has proven deceptive. His aptitude with amateurs did not grow stale, but was rather waiting for a new stream to be uncorked.

That is certainly not news to the current hockey staff at Shattuck, Faribault, Minn. talent factory where all three of Murray’s children studied and skated and where Murray himself has regularly returned to instruct offseason camps.

Still, taking on an NCAA job after sculpting an NHL-laden resume meant stepping on a sheet of ambiguity. But in his first season as a U.S. college head coach at Western Michigan University, Murray has conducted a milestone season for the Broncos, instilling instantaneous assurance for himself and his new employers.

As of last July, Murray was 18 months removed from his second and latest discharge from an NHL staff. Meanwhile, WMU was forced to make its second coaching change in as many years when Jeff Blashill bolted to join Mike Babcock’s staff with the Detroit Red Wings.

Blashill had just overseen the school’s first winning season in nine years, brought them to the Central Collegiate Hockey Association Championship Game and garnered the program’s first national tournament bid since 1996.

Only a double-overtime goal by Denver’s Jason Zucker, a high-ranking Minnesota Wild prospect, prevented the upstart Broncos from progressing beyond the first round.

Any coaching change so soon after making those strides was bound to invite apprehension among Bronco buffs. But all Murray has done this season is deliver the program’s best record since 1995-96, first CCHA playoff title since 1985-86 and its first-ever repeat appearance on the NCAA bracket.

WMU enters its regional tilt with North Dakota this Saturday bearing a 21-13-6 record on the year. Even if they are dislodged after one national tournament game, their current winning percentage of .600 can drop to no lower than .585, which would still constitute the program’s best output since 2001-02.

On a personal level, Murray is already assured his best single-season winning percentage anywhere since his year at Shattuck. The best he could extract out of an NHL team was a .580 success rate after he supplanted Mike Kitchen with the St. Louis Blues for the final 56 games in 2006-07.

Murray, also a seasoned assistant coach in the professional ranks and an accomplished instructor with Team Canada at various levels, spent all or part of a combined 10 seasons guiding the Los Angeles Kings and the Blues. But other than a first-round playoff upset of the Red Wings in his second year as the Kings’ skipper in 2001, his endeavors in the NHL were anything but golden.

A return to fostering NHL hopefuls rather than established professionals could be the cure for his legacy. He has already set a loud-enough tone by meticulously retaining and ultimately adding to Blashill’s foundation.

And while WMU will be the lowest seed in the West Regional this weekend, thus facing a top-dog North Dakota team, the Broncos are on the heels of knocking off another No. 1 seed.

The Michigan Wolverines, who are the top team in the NCAA’s Midwest Regional and have routinely repressed their conference rivals in 28 seasons under Red Berenson, sought their second CCHA crown in three years and third in five years last Saturday.

Considering the platform at Joe Louis Arena―where Michigan has inevitably cultivated greater familiarity between the Great Lakes Invitational, regular-season games against Michigan State and the conference playoffs―Murray’s pupils faced a statement game with the Mason Cup on the line.

They will now be tasked with a restatement on Saturday when they face North Dakota at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. And less than an hour to the south, fans in Faribault are bound to watch with keen interest, to see if Murray can take another step to making Western Michigan his own Shattuck sequel.