Murray finding his groove

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This article was published 18/09/2023 (933 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Owen Murray had been one of the best players on his team for most of his hockey career.

The 2022-23 season was a glaring exception.

The 20-year-old defenceman made the jump from the junior ranks to college hockey, playing at NCAA powerhouse UMass Amherst, and found himself physically and mentally overmatched.

“I wouldn’t say I was ready at the start of the year — I’d be the first to say that — and there was a lot of things I needed to improve on both physically and just overall in handling how to play the right way,” said the product of Decker (near Hamiota) by phone recently. “So, it was a tough start. I think I played our first game of the year and then sat for 10 games straight. That just gave me a lot of time to kind of re-evaluate where I was at.”

For Murray, who started his junior career with the MJHL’s Portage Terriers before moving on to the USHL’s Green Bay Gamblers, the physical element to his game was a sore point. A quick puck-mover as a junior, the 5-10, 180-pounder looked overmatched when he faced bigger, older forwards at the college level.

Instead of retreating, Murray took the opportunity away from game action to get better — on the ice during practice and skills sessions with the team’s assistant coaches and, perhaps most crucially, in the weight room.

“Not unlike most kids who get to Division I hockey, Hockey East is one of the better conferences it’s a very big jump,” said UMass head coach Greg Carvell, who guided the Minutemen to an appearance in the NCAA title game in 2018-19 before winning it all in 2020-21.

“And it’s usually a physical difference. That was the case for Owen when he got here last year — he’s an undersized defenceman — and he needed to get physically stronger. He has great hockey sense and he skates extremely well but he had to adjust to the physical part of the game and by the end of the year he’d come a long way.”

In the second half of the season, with the defensive corps depleted by injury, Murray got his chance. He finished the season with a goal and two assists in 21 games while forming an effective pairing with Ryan Ufko when the Nashville Predators draft pick returned from a stint the American squad at the world junior championship.

“I just kind of found my groove after that,” said Murray. “It gave me that opportunity to reset and figure out what what I needed to do and we have a really good coaching staff here and they they gave us every opportunity to get better and once they kind of recognized that I was ready for some opportunity, they gave it to me I did the most I could with it.”

The Ufko-Murray tandem appears likely to be intact when the Minutemen open their regular season on Oct. 7.

“We just kind of feed off each other every day and it’s funny because he’s younger than me but the wealth of experience and knowledge he has, it’s easy for me to just sit and watch and learn from him every single day,” said Murray. “He did a lot for me in terms of taking my game to the next level in the second half of the year.”

Before Murray left for the off-season, Carvell challenged the young blue-liner to continue his transformation. Murray took the advice to heart, ramping up his summer workouts with his younger brother, Jordan, a 17-year-old with the Terriers. After seeding on the family farm was complete, the Murrays started their third summer in working with Neepawa-based track coach Bryce Koscielny.

“We’ve worked with Bryce for about three full summers now — basically since COVID was starting to wind down in 2021,” said Murray. “We kind of do all of our speed training through him. He does a lot of workout planning, at least for the last couple of years until I came (to UMass) and he’s just been a big, big part of me and my brother’s training the last few years. We’ve kind of taken the next step. What we want to try and improve on in the summers is kind of building that overall speed and power throughout our game.”

Carvell said the upgraded Murray has been very impressive in training camp, likely worthy of a regular spot in the top six and work on the second power-play unit.

“He’s really bought into how we do things here,” said Carvell. “His game is growing, his mental toughness is growing and I think his confidence is growing.”

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca