Panthers’ Paul Maurice on Track to Break NHL Record for Games Coached
Panthers’ Paul Maurice on Track to Break NHL Record for Games Coached
Paul Maurice has a lot on his mind right now. His Florida Panthers are one win away from capturing the Stanley Cup, the first in franchise history and in his illustrious career. They simply need to win one of the next three games they play to accomplish that feat. And despite a brutal beating in Game 4, they have two opportunities at home remaining to close the series out.
While his chances of adding the first Stanley Cup to his resume seem high right now, there is one piece of history that Maurice is on track to make in a few years regardless of the outcome. Maurice sits second on the all-time NHL leaderboard of games coached at 1,848, just 293 games behind the legendary Scotty Bowman. Considering everything Maurice has already accomplished in his career, as well as his age and recent success, there is no reason he should not be able to break this record before he retires.
A Long Road to Florida
As you would expect for someone in a position to break a longevity record, Maurice has been coaching in the NHL for a long time. So long, that he began his career as a head coach with the Hartford Whalers before they moved to become the Carolina Hurricanes. Hired in 1995 at just 28, he became the fifth-youngest head coach to win a game in NHL history when Hartford beat the San Jose Sharks on Nov. 7 of that season. Maurice would go on to spend most of the next decade with Hartford/Carolina, even helping the Hurricanes reach the Stanley Cup Final in 2002 — his sole Final appearance until last season.
After many years of success, a dreadful 2002-03 campaign, followed by a rough start to 2003-04, forced the Hurricanes to fire Maurice and replace him with Peter Laviolette — who would go on to coach them to the Stanley Cup in 2006. Maurice then took a long hiatus from coaching until the Toronto Maple Leafs hired him ahead of the 2006-07 season. Though he spent just two unsuccessful seasons there, he would later reflect on his time in Toronto as “really valuable” saying that “I don’t think that I was necessarily prepared for [the spotlight of coaching in Toronto].”
After Toronto, the Hurricanes would call Maurice back, and he spent parts of four more seasons there, finishing his 11-season tenure with 768 games coached and a .472 overall winning percentage, with one conference championship. Another brief hiatus concluded when the Winnipeg Jets called him midseason to replace Claude Noel. Maurice would find another long-term home in Winnipeg, ultimately coaching 601 games there, and had some impressive seasons, including 2017-18, where the Jets finished 52-20-10 with a .695 winning percentage. That team made it to the conference final but only won one game against the Vegas Golden Knights — the farthest they ever got during Maurice’s tenure.
Still, despite the struggles, Maurice seemed entrenched behind the bench in Winnipeg until, in Dec. 2021, he shocked the hockey world by suddenly announcing his resignation. At the time he would remark: “I would say I’m better positioned than anyone to know that [the Jets’ players] need a new voice… when you have a 26-year professional hockey coaching career, you know. They need a new voice.” Maurice stepped away from the game by his own decision and, though he didn’t say it at the time, he believed himself retired from the game he’d spent three decades coaching. But the Florida Panthers had other plans.
Instant Success With the Panthers
During the postseason run in 2023, Maurice would tell The Athletic that he was “100 percent” sure that his departure from Winnipeg marked the end of his coaching career — until he got a call from Florida Panthers general manager Bill Zito (from “Paul Maurice thought he was done coaching. Now his Panthers are chasing a Stanley Cup,” The Athletic NHL, May 2, 2023). The Panthers were themselves making a shocking decision, moving on from Jack Adams Finals Andrew Brunette to bring in the veteran Maurice — a move that was widely criticized at the time, with many pointing to Maurice’s lack of postseason success as a reason not to bring him onto a team that needed playoff wins right away.
And early in his first season, Maurice’s doubters got plenty of ammunition as the Presidents’ Trophy incumbents struggled out of the gate ith their new coach. But it didn’t take long until they turned things around and were back in the postseason — a postseason dominated by the spectacular performance of Sergei Bobrovsky. The expensive netminder had struggled for most of his Panthers tenure before Maurice’s arrival, but in each of the last two postseasons has looked like one of the best goaltenders in the league and a future Hall of Famer. Whether Maurice had a hand in that is hard to say, but given his long history of great goaltending (Connor Hellebuyck rose to be one of the league’s best during his time in Winnipeg) it’s not out of the question. Whatever the case, Maurice got the Panthers to their first Stanley Cup final since 1995-96 — ironically, Maurice’s first season as an NHL head coach. And now, he has them back on the precipice, one win away from the franchise’s first-ever Stanley Cup.
No One is Stopping Maurice
Even with all he has accomplished, Maurice has never finished a season as a Jack Adams finalist. This season, he lost out to his predecessor in Florida, Brunette, now with the Nashville Predators. But that has not stopped Maurice from building an incredible coaching resume of longevity and success, one that he hopes will finally have a Stanley Cup Championship in the next week. Win or lose, though, no one is stopping Maurice from claiming the NHL all-time games coached record unless he decides he wants to retire.
The veteran coach is still just 57 years old, which is somewhere near the center of the bell curve by NHL head coaching standards. When the Anaheim Ducks hired Greg Cronin as a first-time NHL head coach last summer, he was three years older than Maurice is now, so age won’t impede Maurice’s breaking the record. At 293 games, Maurice needs just over three and a half seasons to break the record — meaning he’ll only have to coach until his very early 60s. And there will be plenty of opportunity. Though the Panthers do have a recent history of making shocking coaching changes, it’s hard to imagine they’ll have a quick trigger with the boss that steered them to consecutive Stanley Cup Finals. And even if they do move on, plenty of other teams will be happy to give Maurice another shot given his recent success.
Of course, Maurice thought he had retired just two seasons ago. If he wants to return to that life soon, that could prevent him from breaking this record. But nothing else will. Right now, Maurice looks on track to secure his first-ever Stanley Cup just days from now, and to break the NHL all-time games coached record three and a half seasons from now. If there are still any Maurice doubters out there, he is about to prove them all wrong.
Be the first to comment