SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) Paul Maurice was once the last player picked in the NHL draft. An afterthought, almost. He never made it to the league as a player. And there were many moments when he wondered if his name would ever appear on the Stanley Cup.
Wonder no more.
It took 1,985 games, 939 wins, four different franchises, a team move, getting fired twice by Carolina alone and a semi-retirement to get him to this moment, a moment he spent most of his 57 years on the planet had dreamed of. never experienced so far.
It is over. Florida 2, Edmonton 1 in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final on Monday night was the final act of the lifelong quest. His name will be on Lord Stanley's chalice. A lifetime of work has now ticked the final box, as the words Paul Maurice will soon be etched into a silver and nickel band for the entire hockey world to see for decades to come.
He's the type of guy everyone respects and that's because it's earned, Panthers forward Ryan Lomberg said. He doesn't expect people to have respect just because he's the head coach. He does it the right way. He truly cares about every individual in this locker room and that goes a long way. So yeah, we all respect him as much as possible.
This was a gap on Maurice's CV, there was no doubt about it. No one has been able to change that now by coaching more games, winning more games and coaching more Stanley Cup-less seasons than Maurice. He would go down in history as a good coach, an experienced coach, a beloved coach, regardless of whether he won a Cup or not, even if the start to his tenure in Florida was difficult.
One of my favorite memories ever of coaching at Florida was about December of last year, Maurice said. So our (team) marketing program is Time to Hunt. And the man had a poster on the wall there and it was beautiful. It said: time to look for a new coach. It was amazing. He kept putting it up at every whistle.
Remove the poster from use. Maurice is now forever a Panthers legend.
And let's be honest: If the Panthers hadn't won Monday night and taken a 3-0 lead in the title series, Maurice would have been haunted forever. But now, when his career ends, they will have to call him a champion coach. The glaring hole has been filled.
Whatever he says, he means it literally, Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov said. If we go back to that first year, when we had those tough moments in the regular season, he gave us the game plan and just said, OK, it's time to wake up. It would literally work almost every time. So that's probably when we realized, okay, you have to listen to him.
Like almost every hockey story that ends with the ultimate sports championship, this story started with Maurice as a small child.
For him, the memories go back to around age 5, growing up in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, about 350 miles north of Detroit. They had three channels at his house: a French channel, CBC and WKBD from Detroit. Saturday nights during the season were hockey nights; they were playing, skating or watching, without exception.
My mother made a pot of spaghetti or chili and we watched hockey, Maurice said. You knew you were getting older because you could make it to third period. That's how it was. My mother made popcorn with half a pound of butter. The half glass of coke you received was smeared with butter. There was salt everywhere.
Maurice doesn't remember much of the early years. But in his mid-teens, Maurice, somewhat ironically considering who this Cup was being played against, was all about a pair of Oilers players Wayne Gretzky and Paul Coffey. The reason: They both spent time in Sault Ste. Marie plays junior hockey on her way to the Oilers.
They used to sometimes play street hockey on the tennis courts across the street from my house, Maurice said. My father and mother still live there. So that's where it became the dream.
He found himself advocating for players more than teams. Gretzky, the greatest ever. Coffey, an Oilers legend and now an assistant coach at Edmonton. Lanny McDonald. They hoisted cup after cup after cup. The seeds were planted.
The arduous pursuit of excellence, Maurice said, without the guarantee of reward.
He didn't know how tough the chase would be, or how difficult it would be to reap the greatest reward.
Maurice did not go to the 1985 NHL draft in Toronto. He didn't even pay much attention to it. Imagine his surprise when his mother called that night and said he had been picked by the Philadelphia Flyers. Maurice started to calculate. The Flyers had the last pick in the draft, No. 252 of 252. That was him. And oh, how his friends enjoyed that.
We went to a bar and I had to do everything last, Maurice said. I got into the cab last, got the last beer and had to pick up the check because I was last. Friends. Good friends.
After playing four years in the Ontario Hockey League, Maurice decided to give coaching a try. First five years as an assistant, then two years as head coach of what was then called the Detroit Junior Red Wings. He made it look easy. He made the finals his freshman year, won the title the next year and went on to join the NHL's Hartford Whalers as an assistant before almost immediately being promoted to head coach.
Coaching suddenly wasn't easy anymore. In his first 19 NHL seasons, he missed the playoffs or was fired in 14 of them. And when he resigned in Winnipeg, no one, not even Maurice, knew what the future would bring. The rest is history. He started watching Panthers games and fell in love. A few months later his phone rang. Maurice moved to Florida with a championship goal, which was finally realized on Monday evening.
He was the right choice, said Panthers president of hockey operations and general manager Bill Zito.
Maurice is one of the hockey personalities. He tells jokes. He is sarcastic. He swears; some would say abundant, he would say he's just doing it right. He likes to say he doesn't do much, always points out he knows nothing about goaltending and keeps his big speeches to a minimum.
It can't be about you as a coach, Maurice said. It's about the room. It's about the players.
Monday night it was about him. The last pick in the 1985 draft never saw the NHL as a player. He is now on top as a coach. Finally.
AP NHL Playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup And https://www.apnews.com/hub/NHL
