Paul Maurice walks away with one final win

Scott Burnside
Scott Burnside
Paul Maurice walks away with one final win

On the morning Paul Maurice walked away from his job as head coach of the Winnipeg Jets he sent one text, that to longtime friend Pete DeBoer the head coach of the Vegas Golden Knights.

The text read simply: ‘I win.’

Watching one of the most respected coaches in the business, a man who sits sixth all-time in NHL games coached, turn the business on its ear by preemptively deciding it was time for a change, it was hard not think that Maurice was spot-on.

Some people will view the move as bold or even courageous. Some might have wondered if there would be a hint of defiance in Maurice’s final words in the town he has called home since taking over during the 2013-14 season.

We saw none of that in Maurice. Quite the opposite.

In those final moments with the local press we saw a man so comfortable in his own skin and so in tune with his own skill set — and by extension so in tune with his own shortcomings — that he felt this was the only reasonable decision to be made.

“This is a good team,” Maurice said. “I’m a good coach.”

But what happens when you realize you can only push the rock part way up the mountain? You have to step away.

“That’s where I feel I’m at,” Maurice said.

Who better to know that this team needed a fresh set of eyes, a fresh voice, than the man who had invested as much as he had?

“They need a new voice,” Maurice, 54, said. “They need somebody to help them get to that next place.

“I’m cheering for these guys,” he added. “I love these guys. I love this place. I know that it’s time.”

But as much as he believes in the team and their potential, he said he also came to realize he didn’t feel he could get them to fully realize that potential.

“We’re just consistently under where we could be,” he said.

Maurice talked about the last couple of years, playing in the bubble, playing without fans and how that had blunted the joy he had for the job, the life that is being an NHL head coach. In the offseason Maurice, GM Kevin Cheveldayoff, owner Mark Chipman and members of Maurice’s coaching staff had frank discussions about whether Maurice was the guy to get the Jets over the hump.

Clearly the feeling was he could be that man. Until it wasn’t.

Cheveldayoff didn’t exactly address the question of whether he’d have fired Maurice if he hadn’t quit but it didn’t sound like that was imminent. And really, it’s a moot point given how this all played out.

Dave Lowry, whose son, Adam, is on the Jets roster, will take over as interim head coach for the rest of the season. Maurice will move on from the organization, but immediately downplayed any notion he’d be in the market for some other kind of NHL job – or media job for that matter.

“I feel good,” Maurice said. “I feel good. I don’t have a game to coach tonight and I don’t have to get a job tomorrow.”

Listening to what was really a remarkable moment, I tried to think of the first time I met Maurice. We have shared history in Windsor, Ontario and on more than one occasion we have compared notes on favored watering holes in the border town where he first played as a promising junior player and then coached after an eye injury ended his chances of playing in the NHL.

I started in the newspaper business in Windsor, although I’m guessing that it was a trip to Raleigh during the Hurricanes’ first season there where we first met with Maurice. He’d become an NHL head coach at the impossibly young age of 28 in Hartford, just before the franchise moved to North Carolina and was instantly gracious with a young reporter still trying to figure things out while working at a new national paper based in Toronto.

I remember covering the 2002 Stanley Cup Final, when Maurice’s Hurricanes were hopelessly overmatched by a Detroit Red Wings team chockablock with future Hall of Famers. What still sticks out two decades later is Maurice’s seemingly inexhaustible patience in chatting with reporters after formal press briefings.

Maybe Maurice figured he should enjoy every moment, understanding that you never know when or if you’ll get to that point again, given the sometimes cruel nature of the game. But his openness was something that would be something of a hallmark for Maurice, his willingness to engage not just about hockey per se, but about the greater elements of sports and relationships and, well, life.

A couple of years ago I called Maurice for a story I was working on about DeBoer as the Sharks were heading to the 2019 Western Conference Final.

He was on his way to the family cottage in Manitoba. The reception was bad and I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Finally I asked if we could reschedule the call. No problem. It meant a great deal to Maurice that he be able to speak about his friend and back in the early days, his roommate. So redoing the call was a minor inconvenience.

I remember a similar conversation with Maurice when longtime Carolina GM Jim Rutherford was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame a couple of years back. The assignment was different than most traditional Hall of Fame profiles; find one person who could explain most comprehensively what made the Hall of Famer in question a Hall of Famer.

I thought instantly of Maurice and Maurice was quick to respond, recalling details and moments that helped illustrate his affection for Rutherford as a friend and mentor that hired and fired him twice before.

Maurice described how he always felt better having had a conversation with Rutherford – recently installed as president and interim GM in Vancouver, by the way – even when Rutherford was firing him.

I must admit I feel the same about my many conversations with Maurice over the years.

Even though it wasn’t a conversation in the traditional sense, I felt the same way Friday morning listening via social media as Maurice explained why he was walking away from a job only 32 people in the world get to have at any one time.

Maybe he could have stayed and the Jets, sitting just three points back of a wild card spot in the Western Conference. Maybe the team could have found the groove that has seemed to elude them most of the year.

But Maurice felt he couldn’t take that risk, couldn’t risk that they’d get to the end of the season and he’d regret not doing what he felt in his heart he needed to do at this moment.

“I just didn’t want to watch these guys fight for the rest of the year when I think they could be better with somebody else,” Maurice said.

Maybe that’s what Maurice meant in part by telling DeBoer that he won because, of course, almost 100 percent of the time, it’s the GM and/or owner who decide that the clock has run out.

But we’re guessing that what Maurice really meant was that he looked deep into the mirror and instead of coming up with excuses or rationalizations or faint hopes, he saw a coach that needed not to be coaching anymore.

My gosh, how refreshing.

Not just for a hockey coach, but how many of us really have the self-awareness to take full stock of ourselves and decide that what might appear to be the hard choice is really just the right choice?

How is that anything but a win?

This seemed to put it all in perspective.

Maurice recalled his first day in Winnipeg back on Jan. 12, 2014 and how he felt that it was a good day for the Jets and certainly a good day for Paul Maurice.

“Today’s a great day too,” the former coach said before he walked out of the Jets’ media room for the last time. “For the Jets and for me as well.”

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