In our flashback to the THN archives from 2003, the life of an AHL wife is put the under microscope. Is the hockey-life easy on a family? Or are there more struggles than meets the eye?
By: Vickie Linegar
Hockey wives look like they have it all - an athletic hockey husband who makes lots of money and jet-sets around the continent. What more could a woman want?
Talk to Rob Murray’s wife and that myth is dispelled. The attractive ladies who walk on the ice during the pregame presentations may look like they have it all, but it can be a lonely life.
Caroline Murray has been following her husband’s career for 13 years. When they met during 1989-90, he was playing for the Washington Capitals, not far from her family home in Virginia.
More than 1,000 AHL and 107 NHL games later, she has experienced more than a dozen call-ups, demotions and trades. In the past five years, Murray has gone from Springfield to Hamilton to Philadelphia, back to Springfield to Saint John and back to Springfield again last season.
In that time, Murray became the AHL’s all-time penalty minute leader (then lost it to Dennis Bonvie last season) and moved to fifth in AHL games played with 1,018.
At home, Caroline fosters a stable living environment for children Taylor and Zachery and provides Rob a life dimension beyond hockey. What happens at the office stays there.
“Hockey is my husband’s job,” Caroline said. “If he were an accountant, I wouldn’t stare over his shoulder, running numbers saying you’re doing this or that wrong. I’d be irritated if someone was doing that to me.”
The hardest part of a hockey wife’s life is uprooting the family home and adjusting to a new environment.
“Being a wife or a girlfriend of a player, you move city to city,” Caroline said. “When he goes to a new rink, he immediately has 25 friends. I move to the city and I don’t know anybody.”
On the flip side, moving from town to town transformed seven-year-old Taylor from a shy introvert into an outgoing child. Travelling around the AHL with her hockey player dad has taught her how to meet people.
During her kindergarten year, she moved three times - starting off in New Jersey, then to school in Saint John, N.B., and eventually to Virginia.
“She realized that if she doesn’t talk to (other kids),” said Caroline of Taylor, “then she won’t have anybody to play with other than mom and dad.”
Murray, 36, won’t be back with Springfield this season, but he has expressed an interest in coaching if his playing services go unwanted. One thing is for sure - the family will be behind him all the way.