Payback time for Maurice

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/03/2016 (3477 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As the championship game in the 1995 Memorial Cup wound down, I recall trying to decide if I had just watched the best junior hockey team ever. In the final, the Kamloops Blazers destroyed a good Detroit Jr. Red Wings squad coached by a young prodigy named Paul Maurice, who caught a lot of people’s attention that year.

He was hired by the National Hockey League’s Hartford Whalers the following season as an assistant coach and was promoted to head coach 12 games into the schedule when Paul Holmgren got the axe. Maurice later moved with the team to Carolina, posting two stints as the franchise’s bench boss (1995-2003 and 2008-12). Add in head coaching jobs in Toronto (NHL and AHL), the KHL and now Winnipeg and it’s a long resumé.

Maurice has coached in 20 out of the last 21 seasons in professional hockey (missing the NHL’s lockout season in 2004-05). While he’s coached some decent teams, he’s had a dose of not-so-good teams as well. He’s made it past the first round of the playoffs twice, reaching the Stanley Cup final in 2002 with Carolina in his best season.

Maurice’s NHL record over the years is just above .500 — part of the reason I was skeptical when he was hired by the Jets on Jan. 12, 2014, taking over from Claude Noel.

However, after a good finish to the 2014 season, he did an excellent job coaching last year’s playoff club (43-26-13). The Jets were an excellent puck-possession team with the best depth the club has had since returning to Winnipeg. The four-game sweep at the hands of the Anaheim Ducks in the first round of the playoffs was much closer than it reads.

That team had “Paul Maurice” written all over it: fast and hard to play against. But that team left the MTS Centre after a summer of general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff’s minimal free-agent activity and the decision to save roster spots for in-house prospects.

Maurice is loyal, sometimes to a fault; he’s towing the company line publicly as we are inundated with the latest Jets rhetoric, whether it’s looking into the past or to the future.

But I can’t help wonder if he wasn’t very disappointed Cheveldayoff decided not to build on last season’s success. I’m betting he wants to win now as much as fans want him to.

Maurice hasn’t earned a good mark from the job he’s done this season (31-39-7). With a reasonably healthy lineup, the team struggled after a good start to the campaign (7-3-1). While the Jets were middle-of-the-pack playing five on five, terrible special teams sealed their fate. That’s part of what needs to change this summer.

Maurice has a long-held weakness: player deployment and loyalty. Sometimes, it’s a goalie he’s stuck with too long; other times, it’s a skater that is a “try hard” player but not very good. To be fair, many coaches have this problem; some overcome it, others never do.

When he’s had to deal with injuries, Maurice has used Chris Thorburn as a quick fix, moving him all the way up to the second line (he’s a hanger-on fourth-liner). You’ve also seen it with defenceman Mark Stuart. Maurice finally took him off the penalty-killing unit (before Stuart got hurt) and the positive results backed up the call.

Maurice has said it’s because of the improved systems and different players understanding better what he wanted and there’s some truth to that, but why did it take so long? The Jets certainly had lots of penalty-killing practice during games, as Maurice approved of penalties last season as part of aggressive play. They paid a price for that this season and when he pointed at the referees making reputation calls against the Jets in his coach’s summit on TSN radio, Maurice needed to point at himself, too.

Speaking of special teams, how about that power play built on systems from pee wee hockey? This is the worst mess I’ve seen in a long time. The Jets stand still and pass the puck around the perimeter and maybe drive a shot into some shin pads or over the net. Their rotation is at a snail’s pace or non-existent.

How about trying some quick movement, both in their passes and moving their feet, and acting like their video coach has shown them the opposition’s penalty-killing tendencies so they can know where they’re vulnerable?

Maurice might as well let a player such as Blake Wheeler or Mark Scheifele pick four teammates and let them run the power play. They’ll, at least, take it seriously.

The solution to righting the coaching ship is simple: franchise owner True North Sports & Entertainment Ltd. is known for its loyalty and it is time to show it to the head coach. Maurice let go of a good club and is toeing the company line. It’s payback time.

Cheveldayoff needs to let Maurice pick his assistant coaches this summer (the current ones were not his choice when he signed with the Jets) and one of those coaches should be in his ear (as far as analytics go) and someone whose opinion he takes seriously. That would solve the problem with the Stuart and Thorburn bias, and extinguish any future ones.

Another assistant should be a special-teams guru. Maurice needs someone who can properly communicate his wishes to the players. The disconnect between coaches and players this season is obvious.

By giving Maurice his pick of coaches to assist him, we’ll see exactly what this former “young prodigy” has in him.

It’s the wise thing to do.

Chosen ninth overall by the NHL’s St. Louis Blues and first overall by the WHA’s Houston Aeros in 1977, Scott Campbell has now been drafted by the Winnipeg Free Press to play a new style of game.

Twitter: @NHL_Campbell