After 29 years of heartbreak, Panthers coach Paul Maurice scales Lord Stanley’s summit

Credit: Jun 24, 2024; Sunrise, Florida, USA; Florida Panthers head coach Paul Maurice hoists the Stanley Cup after defeating Edmonton Oilers in game seven of the 2024 Stanley Cup Final at Amerant Bank Arena. Mandatory Credit: Jim Rassol-USA TODAY Sports

SUNRISE, Fla. — When Paul Maurice finally got his fingerprints on Lord Stanley, he bent over and whispered a few words to hockey’s gleaming silver chalice, like a fisherman who finally reeled in the catch of his life. There may have been an expletive or two. Maurice closed his eyes and hurled 34.5 pounds of glory into the air, savoring a feeling he’d hold forever.

He laughed. He admitted the reference he was about to make was completely offside, and then likened his Stanley Cup journey to an abused dog that garnered sympathy in an SPCA campaign.

“It’s a little like why those Sarah McLachlan commercials are so good: We resonate with suffering animals,” Maurice said. “And I think [people] see me on TV for 30 years and they’re thinking, can we get this guy a Stanley Cup? Because this is painful and pitiful to watch. I kind of got adopted by the Florida Panthers tonight.”

Maurice waited 29 years for a night like Monday in South Florida, and after his team frittered away three cracks at Lord Stanley in his third Cup Final appearance, he must’ve been thinking: What do I have to do to get my hands on this thing?

It was getting hairy. He walked into the rink early one morning this week and looked up at the bank of six TVs in their team lounge and read the banner on the screen: “I’m not shitting you, it said: ‘If the Florida Panthers lose, is this the biggest collapse in sports history?’” Maurice impatiently waited for the segment to shift and the banner to go away, but it didn’t, and he made the team’s video coach change the channel.

“Your dream is slipping out the door,” Maurice said. “Three kicks at it, man.”

Maurice coached the most games in NHL history – 1,985 between the regular season and playoffs – without a Stanley Cup on his resume. Until now. The Florida Panthers went from choking dogs to choking the life out of the superstar-laden Edmonton Oilers in a defensively surgical, 2-1 win in Game 7 at Amerant Bank Arena to cap an iconic Stanley Cup Final.

Oilers captain Connor McDavid captured the Conn Smythe Trophy for playoff MVP, as voted by a Professional Hockey Writers Association panel. He garnered 16 of 17 first place votes to become the first skater to win the Conn Smythe in a losing fashion since Philadelphia’s Reggie Leach in 1976.

Florida bridged Canada’s Stanley Cup drought to a 32nd year. Canadian teams are now unbelievably 0-7 in the Stanley Cup Final since the Montréal Canadiens last hoisted the prize in 1993, including an impossible 0-5 in Game 7s: Canucks (1994), Flames (2004), Oilers (2006), Canucks (2011) and Oilers (2024). Departing Oilers GM Ken Holland did not ride off into the sunset with Stanley, and Oil Country was robbed of a storybook ending.

Emotional Panthers GM Bill Zito conversely had tears in his eyes. Aleksander Barkov became the first Finnish player to captain a Stanley Cup champion. Wily veteran Kyle Okposo shared Lord Stanley with his four kids. It was Seventh Heaven for the Panthers, who celebrated the first Stanley Cup in franchise history. They were founded in 1993, two seasons before Maurice got his first shot as a 28-year-old head coach with the Hartford Whalers in 1995.

Yeah, it’s been a while.

“It’s brilliant,” Maurice said. “It’s not what I thought it would be. It’s so much better.”

Maurice thought about his family, including his wife Mitch, and children Sydney, Jake and Luke. He thought about his parents, Denis and Dolores, back in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, who endured 30 years of losing alongside him. There was an entire army of supporters in the hockey world pulling for Maurice over the last few weeks, most of them superstitious as hell and afraid to talk about their friend with a 3-0 series lead.

Vancouver Canucks president Jim Rutherford selected Maurice in the OHL bantam draft in 1984 with the Windsor Spitfires, gave him his first NHL job in Hartford, and then fired him in 2004 after he guided the Carolina Hurricanes to their first Stanley Cup Final appearance in 2002.

It was four years later, in 2006, after Rutherford’s Hurricanes beat these Edmonton Oilers in Game 7 that he invited Maurice to his Stanley Cup celebration in his hometown of Beaton, Ont.

“We were standing there with Paul and Mitch, looking at the Stanley Cup,” Rutherford recalled. “I told him then that nothing would make me happier than to see you win. He’s had a couple whacks at it. Now he’s won it, and I couldn’t be happier for my good friend Paul Maurice.”

Rutherford said he knew Maurice had what it took to win shortly after a serious eye injury should have cost him his playing career, but he somehow kept playing with one functional eye. It’s that determination as to why Rutherford hired him as a junior coach and kept promoting him through Hartford, then amazingly hired him again as Hurricanes coach for a second tour in 2008.

There were plenty of moments along the way that Maurice thought his Road to Stanley might have reached a dead end. In 2012, after being fired by Rutherford a second time, he took a flier on a job in Russia’s KHL because he it might’ve been his last opportunity at a big paycheck. He was hired in Winnipeg midstream in 2013-14 to replace Claude Noel, kicking off a nine-year run that re-established him as one of the top coaches in the game.

“You’re in this game to win, that’s why you keep getting up in the morning, loss after loss,” Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff said. “He’s been at it such a long time, he’s had to adapt. His work ethic, his level of commitment are second to none. But there are no guarantees that you win.”

That’s why when Maurice surprisingly stepped aside as Jets coach on Dec. 17, 2021, he wondered if that might be it. We talked one day as he was sitting on his dock on Lake of the Woods, Manitoba, and he was fully content – saying that it would take a special job to give up fishing everyday. His pilot was lit again when Zito called two summers ago with an offer to join the Panthers, coming off a 122-point campaign that saw them win the Presidents’ Trophy.

“This franchise changed when Bill came in. It turned around when Paul came in,” owner Vincent Viola said on the ice amid the celebratory chaos on Monday.

When Maurice came back to the bench, he was at peace with himself and his resume, and wanted to do so as unapologetically himself. He became a media darling behind the microphone during this playoff run, his press conferences and quips started appearing as must-see tv on SportsCenter across the U.S. It wasn’t an act.

“For people like me, we’ve seen this side of Paul forever,” Rutherford said. “That is 100 percent him. He’s comfortable in his life and with his role in the game. I was pretty sure he was going to come back and coach, but people get burned out. He identified it, he needed that break. He loves the game too much to sit out for too long.”

When Maurice’s Panthers knocked off the New York Rangers in the Eastern Conference Final, his former captain Blake Wheeler made it a point to find Maurice in the hallway after the series.

“I told him to get it done,” Wheeler said. “Enough is enough. Thirty years. Felt like it was time. He is top shelf. I don’t know anyone who deserves this more than Paul. There’s no chance that I become the player I am without Paul, the first coach that I had that accepted me for what I am, not anything more or less.”

The Panthers joined the 1945 Toronto Maple Leafs as the only team in the 106-year history of the Final to win the first three, lose the next three and teeter on the edge of embarrassment, only to right the ship and win in Game 7. The Cup looked a little different then, it was the Stovepipe Cup era, and there certainly weren’t the same harsh messages or legacies being debated on talk shows.

Players grow up dreaming to hoist the Stanley Cup, and Maurice was no different, but after three decades behind an NHL bench, coaches dream differently. He said he wanted to watch the first period of Game 7, and know that his team was well prepared, and then he would be at peace with whatever the result ended up being. He said he wanted it to look a certain way – and it did.

“Once the puck dropped tonight, I was done working,” Maurice explained. “I’ve got a small little job to do. The lowest minute guy on that team is 10 times more important than me. I think 95 percent of what goes on has nothing to do with the coaches. It’s what goes on with the culture in that room, and we just help support it. The first period happened, that’s what I needed. I was comfortable because we weren’t scrambling around in the first, and that’s probably why I was more calm.”

“He never stopped believing in the group,” longtime assistant coach Jamie Kompon said. “He talked about the path and what we needed to do. Everybody wanted him to win, even the players said they wanted it for Paul. He has been through so much in his career. Now he’s experienced it. I can honestly say it’s my dream come true for me to see him hoist it.”

Maurice admitted “I was holding my fucking breath” in the third period, as were his legions of supporters across the hockey world. So, how did it feel – after thousands of morning skates and enough heartbreak to fund an SPCA campaign – to finally get to hockey’s summit?

Before the Final started, Maurice told reporters he needed one Stanley Cup in his career.

“I was wrong, and I didn’t know it until now,” Maurice said. “There’s a whole bunch of things you don’t know until you get there. I didn’t win the Stanley Cup. I got to share it. That’s a completely different idea.”

Maurice stood up and walked off the podium, no longer an abused animal but a Stanley Cup champion. That title wouldn’t get old, he mused. He laughed and said: “I’m going fishing.”

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After 29 years of heartbreak, Panthers coach Paul Maurice scales Lord Stanley’s summit

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