December in Winnipeg. The month of snow plows, Santa Clause parades and notable Paul Maurice appearances.
A Santa hat and a string of jingle bells wouldn’t have looked any stranger on the former Winnipeg Jets coach than the Florida Panthers gear he wore on Tuesday as his new team prepared to play his former one.
Staying eight years in the same place is hard to shake.
“I’ve been in this room, I think, once, 12 years ago with Carolina,” Maurice told reporters, pre-game, from a dressing room on the visitors’ side of the rink. “But I completely forgot the layout. So I’ve been in the wrong door a bunch of times.”
Maurice’s last notable appearance in the building came one year ago this month, Dec. 17 to be exact, when he dropped the bombshell news he was stepping down as Jets boss, 28 games into the season.
You know what he says about that decision now?
It should have come sooner.
Asked if he would do anything differently if he could: “I’d have got off the bench in the summer,” he said. “To be honest, if I was going to go do something different, it would be that.
“I was in a very unique position to see it. I could see it in the summer … we’d gone from winning a playoff game to banging out 114 points one year and you’ve hit that crest, and then it was time.”
You wonder how history’s course would have changed.
Maurice is certain about one thing: He wouldn’t have been able to turn the Jets around any better than interim coach Dave Lowry did if he had stuck it out to the end of last season.
“If I had stayed, it’d been the same thing,” he said.
It was almost unheard of, the head coach of a struggling team stepping down of his own accord instead of being fired.
It was even more shocking given what Maurice had said from that same podium just two years before he stepped down.
On Dec. 17, 2019 — two years plus a day before he quit — the coach got behind the microphone and addressed the chatter about his then-expiring contract.
“I’m here as long as Mark and Kevin want me to be here,” he said that day, referring to owner Mark Chipman and GM Kevin Cheveldayoff. “This is home for me. I love this place. I’m not looking to be going anywhere. It’ll be kicking and screaming on the way out — that’ll be how that transition happens.”
Two years later, he simply walked away, retreating to his Winnipeg home to decompress, refusing to watch any hockey.
At least, for a few weeks.
That’s when the first of “a bunch of unusual little things” happened that would eventually see him grab another job about as far away from Winnipeg Decembers as you can get.
“I was watching a game in January, it was almost the first time I’d put the game back on,” he recalled. “Flipping through, and my wife says, ‘Does anything interest you?’ I said, yeah, the Florida Panthers interest me. But they can’t stop winning, so nothing’s happening there.
“But it was just the style of game that was interesting.”
That style took the Panthers all the way to first place, overall.
A crash-and-burn in the first round of the playoffs cost interim head coach Andrew Brunette his job.
For Maurice, another “unusual little thing” came along on his way back from the lake in June, in the form of a phone call from Florida GM Bill Zito.
“Was driving home with my wife on a Monday and my phone rang in my car,” he said. “I didn’t know the number. Usually I don’t answer numbers that I don’t know. Telemarketing. I had no relationship with Bill. It was, ‘What are you interested in?'”
The third strange coincidence really hit home for the 55-year-old Maurice.
“My son turns the corner one day and says, ‘Hey, I just got into Miami law school.’ And I’m thinking two-bedroom condo, kid. You don’t know it but Mom and Dad are moving in. This isn’t going to be as much fun as you think.”
Maurice would take the job, knowing full well he would be measured against a league-leading 122-point season.
With just 12 wins in 25 games, including victories in two straight going into Tuesday night, he sees better days ahead for his banged-up team.
“The room is great,” he said. “They work their asses off, they have fun, they love each other. It’s been a real positive place to work.”
The Jets, meanwhile, were a surprising 15-7-1 going into Tuesday’s game, proving Maurice right when he said the players just needed a new voice.
“I’m happy that the Winnipeg Jets are playing well and doing well,” Maurice said. “I’m cheering for them. I’m cheering for the organization, for the fans. It was a difficult, difficult thing to do and it was a very difficult time for me. But I believed that’s where this would go, and that’s good.”
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Twitter: @friesensunmedia
AGING OUT OF THE ‘C’
Former Jets coach Paul Maurice says he saw the day coming that Blake Wheeler would no longer be a captain, and it was years ago.
“Blake and I had talked, from the day that he became captain, that at 35 we would discuss if it was time for him to come off,” Maurice said, Tuesday. “And that was no genius on my part. Ronnie Francis told me that. Ronnie Francis was the captain of our team (Carolina). He says right around 35, 36, you need a different captain. Because you stop connecting with the 21, 22, 23-year-olds in the same way.”
New Jets coach Rick Bowness took away the captaincy from Wheeler just before training camp.
It hasn’t hurt the Jets or the 36-year-old, producing at a point-per-game clip.
“Clearly Blake doesn’t look his age,” Maurice said. “He’s playing exceptionally well and it’s been great for him. It’s been great for the team. It all went right.”
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