Murray is what the Kings need -- or not

Scotty Bowman not having a brother available for hire, the Kings on Thursday introduced Terry Murray -- younger brother of Ottawa General Manager Bryan Murray -- as their new coach.

Murray, who will be 58 on Sunday, has several virtues.

Chief among them is that he is known as a good teacher, which will be useful as the Kings become young enough to double as a day-care center.

Also that he's not Marc Crawford, the previous coach, who relentlessly hammered the young players who are expected to form the team's core for years to come.

Murray, who hasn't been a head coach since 2001 but was an assistant coach with the Philadelphia Flyers the last four seasons, is not a long-term solution. He won't be here when the Kings win the Stanley Cup, if the Cup and the NHL still exist on that distant day.

He's not flashy. He's not a screamer.

He's patient but insistent that his entire team be responsible defensively, and won't that be a healthy change.

He's also blunt. Maybe too blunt, as in his infamous 1997 declaration that the Flyers, about to be swept by the Detroit Red Wings in the Cup finals, were in "a choking situation." When the finals ended, so did his tenure as Philadelphia's coach.

He is, essentially, a bridge between the Kings' wretched recent past and the rose-tinged future they're crawling toward.

And while it's difficult to shake the thought they could have done better, perhaps by hiring up-and-comer Mike Johnston to grow with a young team, they could have done worse.

They could have hired a mullet-wearing former broadcaster who will coach the Tampa Bay Lightning next season after being away from coaching for more than 13 years.

"This ain't a guy who's been in the TV booth," Kings General Manager Dean Lombardi said of Murray, who also did some scouting for the Flyers after he was fired as Florida's coach 36 games into the 2000-01 season.

Murray said all the right things Thursday during a news conference in the locker room of the Kings' El Segundo practice facility.

He talked about the promising young players in the organization -- pronouncing it "organ-eye-zation" in proper Canadian fashion -- and said he had been through rebuilding projects before and has the persistence to plow through another one, challenging though it surely will be.