Life lessons on and off the ice: NHL GMs pay tribute to 'teacher' Bryan Murray as he battles cancer

BOCA RATON, Fla. — It was late November. David Poile’s Nashville Predators were visiting Bryan Murray’s Ottawa Senators. The veteran general managers went way back, and Murray was fighting colon cancer. It was Stage 4, the final stage.

Poile asked Murray if the GMs could honor him at their annual meeting in March.

“There was an awkward pause,” Poile said.

The GMs had been honoring one of their peers at the meeting for years. But they had always honored someone after retirement. Murray was undergoing chemotherapy. He was about to turn 72 years of age. But he had not retired, and he had no plans to retire yet.

“I said, ‘Well, look, this is the right thing,’ ” Poile said. “There was a pause again. ‘Yeah, OK.’ ”

And so Monday night, after a day of talking hockey, the GMs were to gather for a dinner at a posh resort to celebrate a man with whom they had worked and competed for so many years. Poile was scheduled to speak. The Minnesota Wild’s Chuck Fletcher was scheduled to speak. The Buffalo Sabres’ Tim Murray was not.

“I would not be able to do it,” said Tim Murray, who once worked with his uncle in Ottawa. “And frankly, one Murray crying in there will be enough.”

Murray has been in the NHL since 1981, when Poile was the GM of the Washington Capitals and Murray was the coach. He went on to coach the Detroit Red Wings, Florida Panthers, Anaheim Ducks and Senators. He has been the GM of the Wings, Panthers, Ducks and Sens.

But before that, he was a gym teacher in Shawville, Quebec. Asked to describe him in a word, Poile chose “teacher.”

“That is his background,” Poile said. “He was a teacher who just happened to coach a hockey team. I think he is a really good general manager, but I thought he was a great coach. He loved the action of being involved with the players. What I find now is when I run into former players, they tell me how much he taught them. It wasn’t just about being a better hockey player, but about being better people through the life lessons he taught them as a teacher.”

Murray mentored several other GMs – guys like Fletcher, whom he tutored as a young executive in Florida and Anaheim, and Tampa Bay's Steve Yzerman, whom he coached as a player in Detroit. He has had an impact on so many others in the game.

And now he is having an impact on so many others outside of it.

He received his diagnosis June 23, just before the NHL draft. The news broke that he had cancer, but few knew the extent until he gave an interview to journalist Michael Farber, a cancer survivor himself, that aired on TSN on Nov. 13.

The video showed him open, honest and vulnerable. He sat with his shirt unbuttoned and cracked a joke as the nurse handled an IV in chemotherapy. He read the book “David and Goliath” as the medicine dipped down the tube and flowed into his body. He explained that he might have had colon cancer for seven to 10 years, and that it had spread to his liver and lungs. It could have been caught had he had a simple colonoscopy.

The interview upset his family. Even if his loved ones already knew his condition, it was hard for them to see him like that on television. It’s still hard on them now to watch him deal with the disease in public.

“It’s not fun to have, and it’s not fun for my family to have me discussing it quite often,” Murray said. “But I thought it was the right thing to do.”

Murray wanted to teach a lesson: Get a colonoscopy. Don’t put it off. Don’t make excuses.

Many people have gotten colonoscopies because of it. That includes his nephew, who got one Jan. 21 and said he wouldn’t have otherwise.

Some people have had cancer caught because of it.

“He is such a recognized face in hockey that his message touched a lot of people,” Tim Murray said. “We had waves of mail and text messages expressing the fact that people were able to detect their colon cancer at an early stage after getting tested as a result of Bryan going out publicly. Saving one life is huge. How many will he be able to save? Hundreds? Thousands? Nobody knows."

Murray also has set an example. Despite the disease, despite the chemo, despite the toll on his body and mind and spirit, he hasn’t lost his sense of humor. He hasn’t stopped working. He hasn’t stopped living.

He said this honor just meant he was old and had been around a long time. He joked that by honoring him, maybe the other GMs were sending a message that it was time to retire. He joked he felt fine, but he would feel better if he stopped talking to reporters in the shade and got some sun.

He said he hadn’t decided his future yet. The Senators are hot and were five points out of the final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference entering Monday night.

“If we make the playoffs, I might have a job,” he said. “If we don’t, my owner might not like it. I’ll just wait until the end of the year and talk to the right people and then make a decision.”

That’s Bryan Murray.

“To see what he is going through and how he has handled it is amazing,” said the Dallas Stars’ Jim Nill, who has battled cancer himself and watched his wife battle cancer. “He comes moving forward. He has always been a real professional, but not a professional like he is all business. There is a real family feel to him. He is always competitive, but always respectful.”

He deserves respect in return.

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