Terry Murray is happy with Kings rookie Matt Moulson

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When Terry Murray was hired last summer to coach the Kings, one of his projects was to analyze videos of their Manchester farm team to get a sense of the talent that was in the pipeline and might be available this season.

He was happy with what he saw, though not for the reasons he had expected.

He knew about 6-7 center Brian Boyle and promising right wing Teddy Purcell, but he found himself watching the third member of their line, left wing Matt Moulson.

‘Quite honestly, I was watching Boyle and Purcell,’ Murray said, ‘and Moulson kept doing real good things as far as complementing the line and being creative scoring goals and playing the game what I thought was the right way and just getting to the net.

‘So I was really looking forward to seeing him in the training camp.’

Murray liked what he saw there, too, putting Moulson on the left side with Anze Kopitar and Dustin Brown on the Kings’ top line.

Murray remains impressed with Moulson, who was drafted but not signed by Pittsburgh. Moulson played four seasons at Cornell before signing with the Kings as an unrestricted free agent in 2006. Moulson spent the 2006-07 with Manchester and played 57 games with the Monarchs last season. He also had five goals and nine points in 22 games with the Kings.

He scored his first goal of this season on a nifty wrist shot Tuesday after a feed from line mate Dustin Brown.

‘He’s played very well,’ Murray said. ‘He’s smart, he works hard, he’s very opportunistic and plays with good players. He’s able to, because of his skating ability, get to the right places at the right time.’

That reassured Murray that Moulson isn’t out of place with Brown and Kopitar.

‘That was one of the things I was looking at. Is this going to be able to be something they can work with and develop some chemistry, and is the speed going to be able to be maintained?’ Murray said.

‘And so far, so good.’

-- Helene Elliott