Maurice throws weight behind youth movement

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/07/2015 (3740 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TO this point in the off-season, and now we’re through the high-profile opening days of free agency, there are some clear openings in the Winnipeg Jets’ forward group.

Deals or signings could always be out there, but with every day that goes by, it seems more probable the Jets, among the two or three youngest teams in the 2014-15 NHL season, will fill those spots internally.

When the real games start again in October, the organization’s youth movement and draft-and-develop mantra all land on one man’s plate — that of head coach Paul Maurice.

From his perch at the MTS Iceplex since Friday, Maurice has been observing the annual development camp, a full smorgasbord of the team’s future.

The Jets have introduced Mark Scheifele, Jacob Trouba and Adam Lowry with success in the last two seasons. More of that “future” may be coming more quickly, so it seemed a relevant question to ask the coach how he feels about the apparent escalation.

Especially given a healthy majority of NHL coaches are interested pretty much only in winning and not that much in development or daycare for young players, budding or not.

“Exceptionally prepared for it and behind it 100 per cent,” was Maurice’s opener to this question. “I’m all for it when there are players to make that jump. And we have players. We have some good, veteran guys around, too. (Matt) Halischuk signed last week and (Anthony) Peluso, who are certainly going to come in and compete for those jobs.

“Any young player who comes in and makes our team is going to have to beat somebody out for ice time.”

Maurice sees the three young players mentioned, and wants to add just-signed Alex Burmistrov to that group because he’s only 23.

“Those players have come in and become a big part of… almost that second core of our team,” the coach said. “We’ve got Ladd, Wheeler, Stuart, Buff, Myers… so I think we have enough depth and strength there to buy time to have some of these young players come in and get their feet wet and produce.

“When we can do that, we can look at our core as not being just three or four guys but maybe seven, eight or nine guys, and then I think you have a chance to get much better more quickly.

“So here’s the short answer. In the NHL, we’re not drafting and developing as an end. We’re trying to take the exact shortest route to success without any shortcuts.

“The manner in which we’ll do it is build your own, and I’m all for that.”

On this matter, keep in mind Maurice has coached 1,201 NHL games, so demographically, he’s more apt to fall into the aforementioned club that automatically looks skeptically at young players and isn’t prone to trusting them.

Maurice puts up both hands to this idea of lumping him into such a group.

“I’m waving the flag for this,” he said. “It’s going to take some time but it’s the quickest way. There is no other way to do this. The only other way, I guess, is to trade all these good, young players and you might not get value back, and you’ve still then got to go out and overpay on the free-agent market. Most of those teams… the core of the teams that are winning were drafted by those teams.

‘For me, we’re trying to solidify what we’re doing’

“They add pieces when they get to that final place, And then you see them win. Look at Chicago. They’re winning, but then they shed pieces because of the cap.

“I’ve got a little longer horizon in view with this group… I think it’s our best chance to win at the end of the day. You put in the right kind of people to build the program and we’ve been at it for a long time — well, for me it’s only a year — but we’re not even at the next step.

“For me, we’re trying to solidify what we’re doing.”

Maurice pondered the issue for a moment, then made the request that his next comment be the top of the story.

We made it the conclusion, because it sums up what he’s thinking, because it’s the takeaway from the conversation.

“My expectation of our team winning is not going to lessen next year. It is not,” he said. “I expect the drivers of our team, our captains and that second core of Scheifele, Lowry, Trouba, Burmistrov… I expect us to be a better team next year than we were this year, regardless of the age of the players that come into our lineup.

“I’d love to be able to say we’re going to be better and younger because it’s not a matter of being lucky here. I want to build something that has a legitimate chance of doing it year over year.

“That’s the sign of getting better.”

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca