I suspect a lot of people answering in this thread weren't actually old enough to watch Larry Murphy's tenure with the Maple Leafs, because these descriptions of his constant give aways, error prone play and slow footwork leaving him out of position don't reflect the truth.
Murphy didn't play fantastic in Toronto, but he was far from awful and certainly wasn't - at any time - the worst defender on the ice for the Maple Leafs. Part of the issue, too, was that Maple Leaf fans weren't really aware of what kind of player they had. There's a portion of "Leaf Nation" that are known to be "Leaf" fans but not really "Hockey" fans, meaning, players that play in other cities around the league they're not too educated about. When Cliff Fletcher acquired Larry Murphy, it was after the Hawks had ousted them from the playoffs, in large part due to the excellent defensive combo of Gary Suter and Chris Chelios. When Fletcher acquired Murphy, he cited Chelios and Suter and said he wanted to bring in a top line defender. Many Leaf fans took this to mean they had acquired a player of that ilk. Both those men had a nasty streak and the ability to lug the puck. This was not Larry Murphy at all.
The fans miscast his role and so, sadly, did his coach. His biggest downfall during his time in Blue & White can be attributed to idiotic coaching from Mike Murphy.
Throughout Larry Murphy's Hall of Fame career he was known as an elite puck mover and an excellent decision maker. At no point in his career, even in his youth, was Murphy fleet footed, so clearly, the organization was keenly aware of that when they acquired him. However, Mike Murphy, inexplicably, has him carrying the puck more then he ever had at any point in his career, often with mixed and some times horrible results. Murphy was a great passer, but above all, he was excellent in terms of positioning. He was one of the smarter defenders of his era, and he was acutely aware of his limitations so he would always position himself very carefully to limit this. Mike Murphy - for reasons unknown - threw all of this out the window and designed a system that saw the Leaf defense - which wasn't exactly mobile - wheel with the puck.
Also, when Murphy was at his best, he formed excellent partnerships with solid defensive guys (Ulf Samuellson in Pittsburgh and Nick Lidstrom in Detroit) Mike Murphy - again, quite stupidly - didn't follow the blueprint that worked so well in Pittsburgh.
The fans turning on him, in my opinion, was really quite stupid. He was far from the worst player on the ice, and too many of the fans in the building were unaware that Larry Murphy was being horribly misused and instead deduced he was "washed up." Obviously, Scotty Bowman in Detroit could clearly see the issue was him being miscast and was able to essentially take him for free, drop him intro the first pairing on a elite team and watched him pick up two Stanley Cup rings and post back to back 52 point seasons.
I was old enough and basically what I said. Poor personnel decisions and poor coaching. Larry was not a bad player, in fact a very good player.
