Glen Murray was good at putting pucks in nets. The right wing scored 337 career goals, just four fewer than Hall of Famer Adam Oates, his former Bruins teammate.

Like all good goal scorers, Murray couldn’t fight time. By 2007-08, a bad ankle slowed the 35-year-old Murray. He had term remaining on his contract. But on July 26, 2008, the Bruins bought out the final year. With that, Murray’s NHL career was over, replaced by the fresher and healthier legs of Phil Kessel and Blake Wheeler.

Seven years later, Murray is a development consultant for the Los Angeles Kings, tasked to help young players push out graybeards of his former classification.

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“It’s great,” said the 42-year-old Murray while watching the Monarchs, LA’s AHL affiliate, during Manchester’s Eastern Conference finals opener against Hartford on Thursday. “It’s really great working with these young kids and creating a relationship with them. Just helping them out in becoming a pro.”

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The Kings have great players. Drew Doughty, Anze Kopitar, and Jonathan Quick have two Stanley Cup rings apiece. But great players are expensive. Doughty earns $ 7 million annually. Quick carries a $5.8 million cap hit. Kopitar, currently earning $6.8 million, will be unrestricted after 2015-16.

Development personnel, however, are not counted against the cap. They play critical roles in easing cap burdens by developing young, inexpensive players.

Murray is part of LA’s four-man development team. His colleagues are Mike Donnelly, Nelson Emerson, and Mike O’Connell. Like Murray, Donnelly is an ex-King. Emerson played with Murray in LA. O’Connell was Murray’s GM in Boston. Together, they’ve been responsible for turning Tyler Toffoli, Tanner Pearson, Jake Muzzin, Dwight King, Jordan Nolan, Andy Andreoff, and Martin Jones into full-time NHLers. The Kings are among the NHL’s best franchises at drafting and developing.

“It’s seamless,” Mike Futa, LA’s vice president of hockey operations and director of player personnel, said of the Kings’ draft-and-develop factory line. “You can’t pat one part of the equation on the back without patting the other on the back. It’s from drafting kids that you know are going to work and that have NHL assets. Your development team takes them over. They polish the rock and get it to a certain area. They have an American League coach that understands the expectations of being a pro. Then you’ve got one of the best coaching staffs in the National Hockey League at the next level. There’s been success. We don’t look at it like we’ve fallen off the map because of what happened this year.”

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This is Murray’s third season in development. He meets players once they’re drafted by the Kings. He participates in the team’s annual development camp in July.

During the season, he travels approximately once a month from his home in Manhattan Beach, Calif., to Manchester, N.H., to work with the Monarchs. He also monitors the progress of the Kings’ picks in junior and college.

Murray leaves the systems work to the players’ coaches, be it Mike Stothers in Manchester, Brad Berry at North Dakota, or Bob Motzko at St. Cloud State. Murray serves as a resource, whether by relating his experience progressing from the Sudbury Wolves to Providence or how he translated his shoot-first skill into 1,009 NHL games.

“We’re not going to tell them how much ice time they’re going to get or whatever it is,” Murray said. “We’re trying, if they’re a winger coming out of their own zone, how to make a better play on the wall, winning faceoffs, making plays, holding onto the puck. Just different things on how to get more ice time for their coaches.”

One of Murray’s charges in Manchester is Jordan Weal. The 5-foot-10-inch, 171-pound center was LA’s third-round pick in 2010. The third-year pro plays with some of Justin Williams’s smarts and competitiveness. In 73 games this season, Weal scored 20 goals and 49 assists. Through 11 playoff games, he led the Monarchs with 10 goals and six assists. Weal has developed into a very good AHL center who could push for a job up top next season. Tyler Johnson and Brendan Gallagher are proof that small and skilled forwards have a right to play in the NHL.

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“I love him,” Murray said of Weal. “He’s a scorer. He’s a very competitive guy. He plays hard. He does every little thing you need to do. He just needs a chance.”

Williams and Jarret Stoll will be unrestricted on July 1. Weal will be inexpensive on his second contract. It is Murray’s responsibility to help Weal get ready. This could be Weal’s opportunity. If he makes it, Murray will have done his job.

CHANGING ON THE FLYERS

Hakstol hiring a good decision by Hextall

Ron Hextall made a smart move on Monday by hiring former North Dakota coach Dave Hakstol to run the Flyers’ bench. The GM’s smarter move was convincing his owner that a young, progressive, and creative coach who meshed with his philosophy was a better option than hiring an alternative with more NHL experience.

Owner Ed Snider has always been in win-now mode. The Flyers have a history of aggressive and not always shrewd transactions with the present in mind: signing Shea Weber to a $110 million offer sheet, acquiring and extending Andrew MacDonald, signing Vincent Lecavalier to a five-year contract. In two of the last three seasons, the Flyers have missed the playoffs. They are wasting the primes of Claude Giroux, Jakub Voracek, and Wayne Simmonds.

Hextall is a smart GM. He trained in Los Angeles under Dean Lombardi, one of the best in the business. Hextall knows that his core group can’t pull the team into the playoffs and contend for championships with a defense that’s stuck in yesterday’s game. It will take time for Hextall to turn over the blue line and freshen it with smart, mobile, puck-moving defensemen. Hextall determined that Hakstol was the right man to replace Craig Berube and execute the philosophy over a longer period than Snider is used to expecting.

“Our defense will be a totally different kind of defense in the next few years than what we’ve ever had,” Snider told Philadelphia reporters after Hakstol’s hiring. “We’re going to be mobile, young, and keeping with what’s going on in the league today with speed and everything you need.”

The Flyers have good defensive prospects. Shayne Gostisbehere, Samuel Morin, and Robert Hagg project to be good NHL players. When they’re ready, Hakstol will be the right coach to oversee their careers while keeping watch over the veterans.

At North Dakota, Hakstol ran a pro-like program. His teams blended strength, speed, and skill. He insisted on accountability. The results manifested in postseason appearances in all of his 11 years as head coach. He doesn’t mind rugged play, which will make him a good fit with the Flyers.

None of it would have mattered had Hextall been unable to sell Hakstol to his owner.

“He’s one of the most thoughtful, in-depth kind of guys in any field, not just as a GM,” Snider said. “This guy really, really is a deep thinker. He doesn’t make snap decisions. This has been going on since Craig was fired. This isn’t new. He didn’t just start talking with this guy. He wasn’t interested in anybody else after a few sessions.”

It’s not easy for an owner such as Snider to accept the reality of a long-term revival. But Hextall convinced him. Other GMs would not have been as successful.

TAKING UP THE CHALLENGE

Babcock must get most out of Kessel

In his 10 years in Detroit, Mike Babcock never coached a player like Phil Kessel, both in terms of skill and personality. None of the legendary Red Wings under Babcock’s watch, from Steve Yzerman to Brendan Shanahan to Pavel Datsyuk to Henrik Zetterberg, had Kessel’s natural ability to scoot and shoot. The goal of hockey is to score goals, and few players can do so with the ease of Toronto’s 27-year-old right wing.

But there are few players in the league whose reputation carries a stench like Kessel’s. Neither Ron Wilson nor Randy Carlyle could mold Kessel’s talent into a team-first approach. Kessel plays and operates on an island. Babcock never tolerated that kind of behavior in Detroit. The Wings were in synch — defending stoutly and playing committed hockey in the hard areas of the ice. Kessel hasn’t been interested in either. He will have no choice under Babcock, whose term (eight years at $50 million) is longer than Kessel’s (signed through 2020 at $8 million annually).

“What we’re going to be is men,” Babcock said in his introductory news conference on Thursday. “We’re going to be straight up and honest. We’re going to take responsibility in how hard we play. It doesn’t mean it will guarantee you success every night. But we’ll be responsible. You don’t win without good people. We’re going to have good people.”

Kessel has performed under demanding coaches. In 2008-09, he scored a career-high 0.51 goals per game under Claude Julien. That year, he was a point-per-game player in the playoffs. But Kessel wanted out. The Bruins granted him his wish. Kessel didn’t like playing for Julien.

He’s not going to be comfortable playing for Babcock. The question is whether Babcock can make the relationship work.

It wasn’t hard for Babcock to set the tone in Detroit. It already was in place, from GM Ken Holland to the future Hall of Famers who commanded the room. No such infrastructure exists in Toronto. The roster around Kessel is bare.

Turning Kessel into an accountable player and building a big-league lineup to complement his skill will be Babcock’s challenge, his biggest one yet. It might be the task that finally causes Babcock to turn gray.

Hamburglar not necessarily a steal

Andrew Hammond will earn $1.35 million annually for the next three seasons. It’s a fair number for the goalie, who signed his three-year extension on Wednesday. Hammond’s 24-game window showed the Senators he could get hot and carry a team into the playoffs. But while the price reflects Hammond’s value, it’s questionable why the Senators were the club to give the “Hamburglar” such a deal. He isn’t better than Craig Anderson or Robin Lehner. The Senators could save money and acquire assets elsewhere by trading Anderson to a team needing a No. 1 (Edmonton, Buffalo, and San Jose are candidates). But a Lehner-Hammond duo would not improve the Senators. Anderson, while injury-prone, is a good goalie. Lehner projects to be an ace. So far, Hammond hasn’t shown that level of promise.

Easing the burden

One reason Julien insists on rolling four lines is because of the demands his system places on forwards. They’ve been taught to backcheck aggressively and come back harder and deeper than forwards on other teams. When they execute properly, this gives the Bruins good defensive layers. It also gives them more ice to find their legs after gaining possession. This allows the forwards to manufacture momentum even if speed doesn’t come naturally. The problem, however, was that their defensive puck chasing left them gassed when it came time to go on offense. “Our forward group works extremely hard,” said new Bruins GM Don Sweeney. “At times I think it’s too hard for them to go back on offense because the onus is on them. If we can create anxiety at the blue lines, create some turnovers, and go back on offense, philosophically we can make it a little easier to find a way to score some goals and generate offensively at a higher degree.”

Hamilton will be thinking big

Re-signing Dougie Hamilton will be one of Sweeney’s priorities. It won’t be easy. Through three seasons, 178 games of NHL play have given both sides a good idea of Hamilton’s future value. Hamilton, who will turn 22 on June 17, projects to become the Bruins’ version of Victor Hedman: a big, mobile, three-zone defenseman with shutdown ability to complement scoring touch. Defensemen like that make a lot of money. Hedman is currently on his second contract: $20 million over five years. That is where the conversation starts with Hamilton. The final price is likely to be higher. One agent pegged Hamilton’s asking price at north of $5 million annually. The Bruins would prefer Hamilton’s salary to be closer to Jonas Brodin’s annual average value of $4,166,667.

St. Louis may be showing his age

Martin St. Louis hasn’t had a good postseason. Through the Rangers’ first 15 games, the former University of Vermont standout hadn’t scored a goal. Some of it was bad luck. But it also looks like time is slowing the winger’s legs. St. Louis will be 40 on June 18. He will be a UFA on July 1. St. Louis wants to stay with the Rangers, but the feeling is unlikely to be mutual unless he takes a discount, Mark Recchi-like deal with bonuses involved. Under the old regime, St. Louis would have had a good shot at landing in Newark, where graybeards have always been welcome. But new Devils GM Ray Shero may not be as willing to take a gamble on a 40-year-old St. Louis.

Tampa without Stamkos?

The notion sounds so goofy that it should be promptly dismissed. Steven Stamkos is Tampa Bay’s captain and signature player. But there is chatter wondering if Stamkos’s eventual blockbuster contract — he will be a UFA on July 1, 2016 — would be steep enough to prompt the Lightning to deal their captain. This speaks to several things: Stamkos’s asking price, uncertainty about the salary cap in the future, and Tampa’s depth. Stamkos’s threshold is $10.5 million, the annual numbers that Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane will earn starting next season. Stamkos is just as important to his club as Toews and Kane are to theirs. He probably deserves more. But the two Chicago superstars signed their extensions before the weakening of the Canadian dollar. Tyler Johnson is already a top-two center at 24 years old. Vladislav Namestnikov, 22, could become a go-to pivot. They will get raises, as will Ondrej Palat, Nikita Kucherov, and Jonathan Drouin. Moving Stamkos is a wild thought. But some people are thinking it out loud.

Loose pucks

The Bruins have held casual conversations with Adam McQuaid, who will be unrestricted on July 1. The Bruins like the 28-year-old in a bottom-pairing role. But it’s unlikely they’ll have the cash to match what he will earn on the open market. McQuaid would be a good depth signing for a team seeking experience and snarl on the back end . . . In Chicago’s 2-1 Game 3 loss to Anaheim, Kimmo Timonen played just 6:50. Antoine Vermette was a healthy scratch. The cost of acquiring the two rentals: three picks (first round in 2015, second round in 2015, fourth round in 2016) and Klas Dahlbeck. GM Stan Bowman would likely want a mulligan on the two . . . Through 16 playoff games, the Lightning had an unlikely player leading their forwards in ice time per game: Alex Killorn (20:05). The top-line left wing has gained coach Jon Cooper’s trust in all situations. Because the Lightning play with 11 forwards, Killorn takes some shifts lower in the lineup. The Lightning wanted the third-year pro to sign after his junior year at Harvard. But Killorn opted to stay for his senior season. Killorn, who played high school hockey at Deerfield, had 23 goals and 23 assists for the Crimson in 2011-12 . . . Lauren Boyle, wife of Hingham homeboy Brian Boyle, gave birth to Declan Gabriel on Tuesday. He is the Boyles’ first child, leaving Brian only 12 shy of matching his parents’ pace.

Fluto Shinzawa can be reached at fshinzawa@globe.com . Follow him on Twitter @GlobeFluto . Material from interviews, wire services, other beat writers, and league and team sources was used in this report.