Paul Maurice Appreciation Thread

[cptjeff]

mo's first time coaching boychuk was training camp 2009

he was fired a little more than two years later

coached him in 54 regular season games total.

he didn't deal with dalpe until training camp 2010. fired a little more than a year later. coached him 23 games.

if these guys are going to be ruined over such a short period of time, i'd argue they probably weren't good enough to begin with.

who are the other young players we are talking about? did he fail skinner? mcbain? sutter? tlusty?

basically, mo didn't want to give lots of ice time to ahl waiver fodder. the hurricanes sucked at drafting and he took the blame for it because he didn't give boychuk/dalpe free reign. they consistently showed nothing, even in preseason when they got top six ice time. i looked up their numbers where they had something like 1 goal combined in three preseasons.

edit: "Stats over past three preseasons: Dalpe - 13 games, 1 goal/3 points. Bowman - 12 games, 0 goals/1 point. Boychuk - 7 games, 1 goal/1 point."

He largely put guys like Boychuck on the 4th line as checkers and punished them because they didn't produce with tiny minutes and no offensive support. And it's not just the number of games that matters- Boychuck was scratched a lot, but being with the NHL club and practicing in the wrong role affects development too. Maurice tried to put square pegs in round holes and was surprised when the pegs broke on him. Those guys weren't absolute crap- maybe not top talent, but they were top scorers in the AHL, and other teams develop those types into at least complementary scorers with pretty good regularity. But Maurice tried to change their games and put them in roles with no real chance to produce in the NHL, consistently giving offensive roles to veteran players who were playing horribly and not putting up any points either, out of that old boys club 'they've paid their dues' mentality. Guys like Chad LaRose were getting far more opportunities on the top line than the organization's top offensive prospects, who were forced to play a checking role that LaRose was actually good at, and they weren't. The mentality that you paid your time on the checking lines, learned that role, and then graduated to the scoring lines was the problem- offensive players make lousy checking lines, and gritty checking line guys don't usually make good offensive players after they've played there for a few years. The idea of forcing guys like Boychuck on the 4th line and putting guys like LaRose on the 1st line because they've paid their dues or whatever means that we often had ineffective scoring and we had a checking line that couldn't check and didn't contribute to the game in any way.

I get that everything looks better with the passage of time as we forget the bad memories and remember the good, but there was a reason he was heavily criticized for this stuff.

 

[Sens1Canes2]

Those guys sucked. And they continue to suck, relatively speaking. That's not because of Maurice. It's because they're not NHL regulars.

 

[Anton Babchuk]

And it's not just the number of games that matters- Boychuck was scratched a lot, but being with the NHL club and practicing in the wrong role affects development too.

He played 83 combined NHL/AHL regular season games in each season under Mo. Your memory is clearly flawed and can't be trusted.

To address the rest, yes it is true that other team's develop top AHL scorers in contributors "with regularity", but it is also true that many top AHL scorers never make it. Just look at the AHL scoring leaders every year...it's filled with busts. Why are we determining that a very small sample size of players over a short period of time (1-2 years) is due to the coaching rather than perhaps the Hurricanes just drafting players who were destined to be AHL lifers, like many hockey players are? These guys were mid-first round and mid-second round picks. You can find tons of busts around those spots. They were the Hurricanes "top prospects" by default, not because they were can't-miss talents.

Hurricanes fans massively overrated Dalpe and Boychuk and got mad that Mo didn't agree with their assessment. They never showed anything. They had 5 combined points in 20 preseason games, which they were actually playing Top 6 minutes in. Fans did the same thing with Patrick ****ing O'Sullivan. It was probably even worse with him. Did Mo ruin him, too?

 

[HisIceness]

I have nothing against Maurice but his time to go had come and we had to move in another direction for the sake of him and the team.

I'm happy for him, but I just cannot root for the Jets, cannot do it.

 

[Navin R Slavin]

lol to this whole thread

 

[Surrounded By Ahos]

It's a shame Mo ruined Skinner, too. That kid had the potential to be an elite goal scorer, or a 30+ guy at least

I think Boychuk/Dalpe failing was more on them than Maurice. If they were legitimately good enough, they'd have cracked the top six, like Skinner did.

 

[cptjeff]

It's a shame Mo ruined Skinner, too. That kid had the potential to be an elite goal scorer, or a 30+ guy at least

I think Boychuk/Dalpe failing was more on them than Maurice. If they were legitimately good enough, they'd have cracked the top six, like Skinner did.

The issue is development and support, skill is a movable feast. You can make players better with proper coaching, especially young players. Skinner was good enough coming out of Juniors to leap straight into the NHL and have a great season. He forced his way in, and good for him. But I don't think Maurice played much (or any) role in making that happen. Boychuck and Dalpe weren't at that skill level, but they were never really put in a role where they could build their skills or given the support to do it. That's the problem. Peters has done that with several guys, making passable or even good NHL players out of guys that we never really thought would be NHL talent. He's done it by putting them in roles where they could learn, and he's helped teach them the skills they needed. Under Maurice, if a young guy didn't come into the season with the skills already learned, he never learned those skills.

Developing players is something we've historically sucked at, and most of this team's history has been with Maurice as coach. Do you really think the coaching has nothing to do with how well a team develops talent? Our draft positions have historically been reasonably decent, though we've traded away higher than average numbers of picks, and we've picked guys mostly in accordance with the consensus rankings. But we've gotten a lot less out of those picks than most teams. Why? Because we haven't developed players the way other teams do. Detroit regularly gets gems out of the late rounds. Their scouting is better, sure, but the key to what Detroit does is development. They teach guys and make them more skilled than they were. Peters comes out of that system, and it already shows. He hasn't just put players in the lineup who already had whatever amount of skill, he's made young players better. We're a budget team, and we can't succeed without developing young players. Peters brings that. Maurice didn't.