SUNRISE, Fla. -- On Nov. 7, 1995, Paul Maurice paid tribute to his first win as a National Hockey League coach with a Whopper and fries, not a filet mignon and a glass of vintage red wine.
His Hartford Whalers had just posted a 7-3 home victory against the San Jose Sharks, and it was time to party. OK, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. Indeed, he chose to honor the occasion in a more modest way.
"My wife and I hit the Burger King drive-thru as a celebration dinner on the way home," he recalled with a laugh.
"Otherwise, I just remember so very little of what happened on the ice because I was just trying to get the next line right. You didn't want to have too many men on the ice and you're staring at the lineup card instead of watching the game. It was a reality check. I knew I was over my head and had a lot to learn.”
Now, 29 years later, he’s at the head of the class. Consider his lessons learned.
And then some.
On Monday night, exactly 10,457 days after putting himself in the coaching win column and hitting that burger joint afterwards, he stood on the ice at Amerant Bank Arena hoisting the Stanley Cup over his head in what was the completion of an almost three-decade quest to get his name engraved on hockey’s Holy Grail. His Florida Panthers had just defeated the Edmonton Oilers 2-1 in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final and there he was, smiling and playfully cursing at the trophy he referred to as “Stanley,” unleashing a mixture of emotions that comes with the culmination of a lifelong pursuit to land the sport’s ultimate prize.
What a journey it was to finally get here. The raw numbers: 1,986 games coached between the regular season and Stanley Cup Playoffs; 939 wins.
It was a coaching odyssey that started with the Whalers, who relocated to Carolina and became the Hurricanes in 1997. Just one year after leading the franchise to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in 2002 when it lost the best-of-7 series 4-1 to the champion Detroit Red Wings, he was fired by then-general manager Jim Rutherford a year later.
Next came a stint with the Toronto Maple Leafs from 2006-2008, one that ended after failing to lead them to the playoffs in either of his two seasons. He was rehired by the Hurricanes later in 2008, only to be fired by them again three years later.
He was hired by the Winnipeg Jets in 2014, the start of an impressive seven-year run that ended when he resigned in 2021, stating he’d lost the love of the game. He said he’d come to terms with never having led a team to the Stanley Cup and looked forward to spending time focusing on fishing, one of his other passions.
Then, suddenly, Panthers GM Bill Zito called. Everything changed.
Zito put no pressure on Maurice, simply asking if the job might intrigue him. Living in South Florida and running a team with a promising talent base led by forwards Aleksander Barkov and goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, well, as Maurice says, “it just felt right.” He was hired June 22, 2022.
There were growing pains, sure. The Panthers started slowly, which Maurice expected. But there was never any panic.
“I told the players it would take about half a season to learn our new system and to stick with it,” he said. “To their credit, they did.”
Following his blueprint of a high-tempo, hard forechecking, tight defensive game plan, the Panthers reached Cup Final last season, when they lost in five games to the Vegas Golden Knights. Instead of experiencing a dip in performance from the disappointment, they came back and finished the job this time.
“I needed to win one,” Maurice said of his buddy, Stanley.
Now he has.
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Beeton, Ontario is a small town about 30 miles northwest of Toronto. It is the hometown of Jim Rutherford, former GM of the Hurricanes, current president of the Vancouver Canucks.
On July 15, 2006, the community welcomed a visit by the Stanley Cup as part of a celebration for their native son. Rutherford’s Hurricanes had won the Cup a month earlier, and this was the chance to honor the moment of a lifetime.
In attendance were Rutherford’s close friend Maurice and his wife, Michelle. Despite having been dismissed by Rutherford three years earlier, they’d remained very close. When you remain loyal to someone who’d fired you, it says a lot about how tight your relationship is.
“I remember that night,” Rutherford recalled. “From that moment, my biggest wish has been that Paul one day would get his name on the Cup like I did.”
Five years later, Rutherford fired Maurice from the Hurricanes for the second time in less than a decade. And still, remarkably, their friendship endured, just like Rutherford’s hope did of one day seeing Maurice lift the Cup.
