Maclean and Murray were each fired in Washington in 1990, leaving them "to hang out together on a daily basis wondering what the heck we were going to do next."
They didn't wonder long. Murray was hired as general manager and coach in Detroit for the 1990-91 season, and when Maclean was heading to an airport within hours of accepting the coaching job with the Philadelphia Flyers' American Hockey League team in Hershey, the phone rang.
"I told Bryan I'd just been offered the Hershey job and he told me, 'Well, you'd better change your plans because you're coming to Detroit with me,' " Maclean said, laughing. "I was unemployed one minute and then I had two job offers the same night."
They spent a few years together in Detroit, and when Murray became general manager of the Panthers in 1994, replacing Bobby Clarke, Maclean recalls sitting with his former boss at a Detroit restaurant one Saturday morning.
"I said to him, 'Bryan, I'm serious. I want the job in Florida.' " He said I'd been an assistant coach with him for a long, long time. He was getting heat to hire Larry Robinson and all these big names as his coach and I told him, 'Bryan, you'd be an idiot if you don't hire me.' He just looked at me and he walked away. A month later, he hired me and he took some serious heat. I have so much respect that he gave me that chance. We had some great, great times together."
Murray, a native of Shawville, Quebec, was hugely influential in the career of coach and former Panthers general manager Martin, who hails from the same neck of the woods.
Martin, now an assistant coach with the Pittsburgh Penguins, was studying for his Master's degree in business administration at the University of Ottawa in the mid-1970s when he recalls first meeting Murray, who then was coaching Rockland in Ottawa Valley Tier II junior.
Their paths would cross in major-junior hockey, and when Martin was offered his first NHL coaching job with St. Louis in 1986-87, straight out of junior and a Memorial Cup championship with Guelph, he sought Murray's counsel over coffee in Shawville.
"I've always seen Bryan as a sincere person, someone who was great at sharing his knowledge and experience," Martin said Saturday.
"He had a very successful career as a coach and general manager and he always was a person I had tremendous respect for. I've always looked up to him, not just for what he accomplished in the NHL, but as a human being."