Paul Maurice returns to Winnipeg with praise for Jets and a long way to go in Florida
It has been almost a year since Paul Maurice made one of the stunning moves of the 2021-22 NHL season by abruptly resigning as coach of the Winnipeg Jets with more than half of the year still left to go.
It made for a fresh start for the Jets — Maurice said it’s part of why he made the decision — and, ultimately, for a new identity for these Florida Panthers, who hired him in June.
On Tuesday, it was time for a reunion in Winnipeg, as Maurice, for the first time as the Panthers’ coach, returned to the Canada Life Centre to face his old team.
“It’s still home for part of my family and a special place,” Maurice said. “It’s a really good team, incredibly well-run organization and it’s a special market because it needs the fans to survive — it’s not a big building, it’s not a big market, so that connection there between the fans and the players is unique, and special. So it’ll always be a special place.”
For the Jets, the change has worked out so far. Winnipeg entered Tuesday in second place in the Central Division, with the sixth best record in the NHL. The Jets, improbably, have been one of the best teams in the league so far.
For Florida, the move has yielded more complicated results. After winning the Presidents’ Trophy last year, the Panthers sit outside postseason position, but his hire won’t be judged on what Florida does in the regular season. The Panthers hired Maurice almost strictly because they believe his systems, when implemented with a team as talented as Florida, can lead to a Stanley Cup.
It was certainly a gamble for the Panthers, given Maurice’s all-time losing record and the fact he has only ever been to the Stanley Cup Finals once in 20-plus years, and yet part of their belief in Maurice stems back to his time in Canada.
Before he took over in Florida, Maurice was best known as a steward for rebuilding teams. He was the coach of the Carolina Hurricanes when they moved from Hartford, Connecticut, and guided them from the dregs of the Eastern Conference in the mid-1990s to the 2002 Stanley Cup Finals. In Winnipeg, he was tasked with a similar job: The Jets moved from Atlanta less than three years before Maurice took over and he got them to the NHL Conference Finals in less than five years, finishing his eight-plus years in Manitoba with a winning record.
With the Panthers, he found a new challenge.
“I’ve probably only coached two or three teams that really had a legitimate chance over those 20 years. Our biggest challenge each year is, Could we make the playoffs?” Maurice said in the preseason. “These guys are onto something good.”
So far, the results aren’t there. Florida is hovering around .500 and just trying to contend for the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs.
Still, his trip to the Western Conference finals with Winnipeg in the 2018 Stanley Cup playoffs would count as Florida’s deepest postseason run since it reached the 1996 Stanley Cup Finals in only its third season of existence — and his Jets teams, on paper, were nothing like the Panthers, who were already a legitimate Cup contender before Maurice arrived.
It should be the best chance yet for Maurice, 55, to win his elusive championship and his confidence isn’t wavering despite an up-and-down start to Year 1 in South Florida.
He’s used to building, anyway, and he considers this Panthers job to be a different sort of rebuild — one with a stronger starting point, but still a long way to go.
A return to Winnipeg is a reminder of what he can do as a builder — and also the heights he has yet to hit.
Said Maurice: “It’ll be interesting behind the visitors’ bench, for sure.”
