Before and after his brief career as a Toronto Maple Leaf, defenseman Larry Murphy won Stanley Cups. He didn't succeed in Toronto, but in this story from THN's exclusive Archive, we examined what made Murphy such an elite D-man – and a Hockey Hall of Famer.

Toronto Maple Leafs fans have, on more than one occasion, taken out their frustrations on individual Leafs players. THN spotlighted one of those players – star defenseman Larry Murphy – in this cover story from our Jan. 19, 1996 edition (Vol. 49, Issue 18). THN writer Michael Ulmer chronicled the factors that made Murphy a terrific player, especially when it came to offense.

(And this is your regular reminder – for full access to THN’s exclusive 76-year Archive, you just need to subscribe to the magazine.)

The Toronto-born Murphy won a pair of Stanley Cup championships before the Maple Leafs acquired him from the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1995. His offensive totals dropped off somewhat when he was in Toronto, but the Leafs didn’t have the offensive firepower the Penguins did. That said, Murphy was deeply respected by his Buds teammates and the rest of the NHL.

“I was watching the highlights and there was Murph scoring a late goal to send a game into overtime,” Ottawa Senators’ then-assistant coach Pierre McGuire said of Murphy. “High shot, far side, from the slot, the same shot he practiced every day, before practice and after, every day I knew him. I almost fell off my chair laughing. That’s Larry Murphy.”

“Watch the way forecheckers peel off him,” added Leafs right winger Mike Gartner. “They’re anticipating a good pass so much they don’t want to risk finishing their check. He opens his stick up, he makes it look like he’s going to pass and give the puck up. I’ve seen it happen dozens of times. He ends up not having to make the pass and walking out of his zone.”

Murphy was a soft-spoken competitor, but he saw the action in front of him better than most of his fellow NHLers. He never had outstanding foot speed, but his instincts didn’t need speed to be effective.

“I’m not a fast skater, I don’t have a fast shot,” Murphy told Ulmer. “That kind of takes a lot away right there. Knowing that, I knew what I had to do to be successful and to last. That’s the most important thing, stay in the league and play the game that will keep you there.”

Murphy lasted less than two full seasons in Toronto, and he was scapegoated by fans and some media for his blemishes as a player. Astonishingly, he was traded to Detroit for future considerations, and he spent his final three-and-a-half seasons with the Red Wings, winning two more Cups before retiring in 2001. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2004 after playing 1,615 regular-season games and generating 1,217 points. In the end, Toronto’s loss was Detroit’s gain, and although Murphy never rubbed his success in the collective face of Leafs fans, he quietly went about his business and carved out a terrific legacy for himself.

“What you see with Larry Murphy is what you get,” Leafs’ coach Pat Burns said. “I like what I see and I like what I get. He controls the power play, he’s a stable defenseman, he’s exactly what we knew he would be.”

EFFICIENCY EXPERT

By Michael Ulmer

January 19, 1996

The kid at LeafSport, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ official merchandising outlet, looks a little sheepish.

It can custom-order a Larry Murphy shirt, he says, as ticket-buyers trickle into the front corridor of Maple Leaf Gardens, 10 feet away. But aside from a couple of orders, the only person who has bought them for Christmas is, uh, Mrs. Murphy.

The kid is hip deep in Mats Sundin, Doug Gilmour, Felix Potvin, even Tie Domi jerseys. But Murphy, the local boy who will one day retire as the third-most prolific-scoring defenseman in NHL history isn’t in stock and never will be.

Try to picture Murphy, visualize his stiff-backed, choppy skating style. Odds are, even in your mind’s eye, he is making the perfect outlet pass.

People don’t go to NHL games to see outlet passes and Murphy, 34, excels at most every virtue people outside the game ignore and those inside savor.

“I was watching the highlights and there was Murph scoring a late goal to send a game into overtime,” says Ottawa Senators’ assistant coach Pierre McGuire, who handled Murphy while both were with the Pittsburgh Penguins. “High shot, far side, from the slot, the same shot he practiced every day, before practice and after, every day I knew him. I almost fell off my chair laughing. That’s Larry Murphy.”

For those few Murphy afficionados, there is a trilogy of highlights.

- Murphy dawdling and distracting Soviet netminder Evgeny Belosheikin as Mario Lemieux accepts a pass from Wayne Gretzky and scores the winner in the memorable 1987 Canada Cup final.

- Murphy sending Lemieux in for the backbreaking goal in the 1991 four-game sweep of the Minnesota North Stars in the Stanley Cup final.

- Murphy absorbing a pounding from Chicago Blackhawks’ defenseman Chris Chelios in the last minute of the third game of the 1992 Stanley Cup final without hitting back, thereby avoiding a penalty and effectively ending the contest, won 1-0 by the Penguins.

Murphy, a handmaiden to hockey history, is all about efficiency and efficiency is about survival. A clunky skater with a middling shot, Murphy has elevated the game’s minutia into a Hall of Fame career.

“I’m not a fast skater, I don’t have a fast shot,” Murphy says. “That kind of takes a lot away right there. Knowing that, I knew what I had to do to be successful and to last. That’s the most important thing, stay in the league and play the game that will keep you there.”

“What you see with Larry Murphy is what you get,” says Maple Leafs’ coach Pat Burns. “I like what I see and I like what I get. He controls the power play, he’s a stable defenseman, he’s exactly what we knew he would be.”

He is, in fact, exactly what he pretty well always has been.

Durable: Now in his 16th NHL campaign, Murphy has never played fewer than 72 games in a full-length season. In this, his first season with the Maple Leafs after being dealt for Dmitri Mironov and a second-round entry draft pick in a lopsided summer trade, Murphy had played all 40 Toronto games.

Opportunistic: He has scored 20 goals five times and stands fourth on the all-time NHL points list for defenseman. With eight goals and 36 points this season, he had 241 career goals, 740 assists and 981 points. Murphy passed Larry Robinson in career points early this season and will top Denis Potvin (1,052) before his career ends. Only Paul Coffey and Ray Bourque are beyond his reach.

Underrated: Because of the presence of Rod Langway, Coffey, Chelios and Bourque during his tenure in the league, he has never finished as high as runner-up in voting for the Norris Trophy. He has been a second team all-star three times.

All of which leaves Murphy nonplussed.

“People always ask me, ‘Do you think you get enough credit,’” Murphy says. “And I’d have to say, ‘Yes,’ because I get asked that question all the time. Playing in Pittsburgh helped my career, being in the Canada Cup did, too.”

Murphy smiles easily and often and is known throughout NHL press boxes as one of the game’s premier ambassadors. Murphy, says one Pittsburgh journalist not given to superlatives, is what all professional athletes should be like.

He was reared that way. The youngest of two sons born to Ed and Doris Murphy, He was raised in a middle class home with 15 foster brothers and sisters. The Murphys took young people with emotional difficulties into their Toronto area home, raised them for two years and then surrendered them for adoption.

“I think what Larry took from that was the lesson of compassion,” Doris says. “Our boys always had a Mom and Dad and I think they I found out that not everybody was that lucky.”

“You know,” Ed says, “somehow or another those kids would always end up helping pack his hockey bag.”

Murphy played forward until his bantam year, then shifted to defense because there was no room at center on the team. The Peterborough Petes drafted Murphy as a defenseman and he won a Memorial Cup, assisting naturally enough, on the Cup-winning goal.

Selected fourth overall in the 1980 NHL entry draft, he spent his first three full NHL seasons in Los Angeles-setting the NHL record for most assists (60) and points (76) by a rookie defenseman in 1980-81 – and got so caught up in the hoopla of playing in the NHL that he waited I until his sophomore season to buy a car and then drove the 1982 Honda Accord for six years.

Murphy was traded to Washington six games into the 1983-84 season. By then, Murphy’s self-reliant streak had become evident.

While teammates read magazines or newspapers on airplane trips, he read the Wall Street Journal. Where coaches saw a 6-foot-2, 210-pound defenseman who was big enough to hit, but seldom did with authority, Murphy recognized a physical style might please his employers, but hasten his departure from the league.

“Sure, coaches sometimes wanted me tougher.” he says. “When I first started out, they would try to develop you into a certain type of player. I was trying to develop in a different way.”

That may help explain why the fourth-highest scoring defenseman ever has been traded four times. He’s the kind of player who looks better in the rear-view mirror, according to Florida Panthers’ GM Bryan Murray, whose Capitals traded Murphy to the North Stars from Washington in 1989.

Murray says it wasn’t so much the Capitals were unhappy with Murphy - although he, too, wanted the rearguard to have a greater physical presence - but that Murphy is one of those players constantly in demand, yet not thought to be irreplaceable.

Murphy reached hockey Valhalla at 30 when he was traded to the Penguins from Minnesota in 1990. Under Bob Johnson and later Scotty Bowman, Murphy became precisely the player he wanted to be. Surrounded by Herculean talents such as Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr, there was plenty of call for a superb technician more adept at moving the puck than the body.

As his skating slowed, his attention to detail magnified.

Watch how many times Murphy picks a clearing attempt off the boards while the Leafs are on the power play.

“Sometimes people say his defensive game is a little lax,” says Maple Leafs’ defenseman Todd Gill. “But I think what happens is he’s so smart, he thinks so far ahead that if a play didn’t happen the way it ordinarily would, he gets caught. It’s not that he doesn’t read the play well, I think he reads it too well.”

Murphy appreciates Gill’s words, but winces at the description. It’s not that he’s unduly humble. Murphy had no trouble preparing his own arbitration case in Pittsburgh. It’s just that doing what it takes to stay in the game is so rudimentary for Murphy, he sees no fascination in it.

For Murphy, greatness is found in the little things. Count the number of outlet passes Murphy makes that milliseconds later prove exactly the right decision. Pay attention to the number of times he takes a weak shot that finds the goal while other defenseman fire lasers that just miss.

“If you’re open beside the net on the power play,” says Toronto captain Doug Gilmour, “it just seems like he always gets you the puck.”

Toronto’s power play had risen from 15th-best in the NHL last season to No. 8 this season - largely because of Murphy’s influence. He had 18 assists on the power play, which ranked him fifth in the league.

“Watch the way forecheckers peel off him,” says right winger Mike Gartner. “They’re anticipating a good pass so much they don’t want to risk finishing their check. He opens his stick up, he makes it look like he’s going to pass and give the puck up. I’ve seen it happen dozens of times. He ends up not having to make the pass and walking out of his zone.”

Murphy is a bottom line guy so it seems natural his great off-ice passion, apart from family, is finance. He passed six- and three-hour exams last year to earn his stockbroking certificates during the lockout and still held his post as the Penguins’ player rep.

“There’s real attention to detail with Larry,” says Dave Root, a partner with Murphy in a Pittsburgh financial services office. “He’s really prepared and he really leans toward conservative investments.”

Conservative is a term endorsed by Murphy, who is earning $2,275 million (U.S.) this season. A thoughtful man, he recognizes the impact of the current economic shakedown. A conservative man, he thinks it’s largely for the best.

“It’s tough when you hear about a company laying off X number of people, but I really believe that the more efficient the country is, the better off everybody will be,” Murphy says. “It’s tough to swallow for a family that just lost their job, but I really think if we can be as efficient as possible, we’ll be better off.”

Better off is what the Maple Leafs have been since he arrived. Quietly, efficiently, Larry Murphy is at work again. 

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