Revisiting the Carolina Hurricanes 2011 Draft Class
By Alex Ohari
Round 1, Pick 12 – D Ryan Murphy
With their first round pick of the 2011 draft, the Carolina Hurricanes continued their trend from the 2010 draft, and went the route of rebuilding their defense corps, selecting small but skilled defenseman Ryan Murphy from the OHL. Murphy, hailed as a smooth skating, offensive juggernaut, was lauded as the guy who would quarterback the Hurricanes powerplay for years to come. The expectations we’re too high from the start.
In case you’ve forgot, I’m here to remind you that the Canes #1 fan, Don Cherry, had endorsed Murphy as the guy he would take with the first overall pick the entire season leading up to the draft. The same draft that yielded Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Gabriel Landeskog, Jonathan Huberdeau, Sean Couturier, Mika Zibanejad and Dougie Hamilton in the Top-10. Needless to say, Murphy had real support, and looked like a great pick at the time.
Despite the hype, things never got going for Murphy. His point totals decreased in both of his OHL seasons following his draft selection, and scored just 21 goals in those 2 years following 26 in his draft year alone. The Hurricanes still had high hopes for him though, and with their weakened D core, looked to give him every chance imaginable to earn his place.
Unfortunately, he could never manage to. As an NHL rookie, he played 48 games in 2013-14, and despite starting over 61% of his shifts in the offense zone, he had a Corsi of just 49.1%. He also had just 3 points on the powerplay despite averaging 2:35 of powerplay ice time per game. Defensively, he was an absolute nightmare.
He actually managed to regress from there, with his games played dropping from 48 to 37, to 35 and finally to 27 during his 4 years in the Hurricanes organization. In his final year, Bill Peters had no faith in him. He started 64% of his shifts in the offensive zone and his Corsi was just 47.9%. He was given just 13:10 of ice time per game, and was basically banished from the powerplay, playing just 23 seconds a game. His time was up.
The Hurricanes finally traded Murphy in June of 2017, six years after selecting him to be the future of their defense core. They got just a 6th-round pick in return for him, which they used in 2019 to draft F Kevin Wall. It’s unfortunate that Murphy, who seemingly had all the talent in the world, showed flashes with the Hurricanes but could never put all the pieces together.
Since moving on from Raleigh, Murphy has bounced around, playing just 26 NHL games compared to 106 in the AHL in his 2 years away from the Hurricanes. Now 26 years old, the NHL has decidedly seen enough of Ryan Murphy, as he signed a one-year deal with Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk of the KHL, which all but seals his NHL fate as a bust.
In total, Murphy played just 151 games across 5 seasons for the Hurricanes, which resulted in just 6 goals and 37 points to go with a -36 rating. To select Murphy, the Hurricanes left some solid forwards on the board – Sven Baertschi, JT Miller and Joel Armia, as well as defensemen Oscar Klefbom and Connor Murphy. A huge disappointment,