Maurice offers advice to former NHLers getting into coaching

WINNIPEG -Hockey players and coaches tend to live one day at a time.
It's a cliché, but it's also a helpful way to avoid the roller coaster of emotions they all experience through a season.
So it's not difficult to imagine that players in the middle of their careers are sometimes reluctant to discuss life after hockey, but Winnipeg Jets coach Paul Maurice has seemingly found a way to have that conversation - especially if he sees coaching potential in a particular player.
"When you stand behind the bench and you listen to players talk about the game - some guys don't say anything behind the bench, some guys are chirping behind the bench, some guys are calling the game - you can tell a guy that sees the game like a coach," Maurice said.

It's not hard for Maurice to come up with examples. He's seen a lot of them over the course of his 1,600 NHL games behind the bench.
One that immediately came to mind is Ron Francis, who Maurice coached with the Carolina Hurricanes from the beginning of the 1998-99 campaign until the 2003-04 season.
Francis was the team's captain for all but one of those six seasons, and the way the two-time Stanley Cup champion saw the game impressed Maurice.
"Francis was the best by far," Maurice said. "He could call the game to the point where I'd write down some of the stuff that Ron would say and I'd look back at what he saw, because I hadn't seen it."
Two other former players mentioned conversations with Maurice as the stepping stone into the coaching world: Olli Jokinen, who coaches the U-16 team at his South Florida Hockey Academy, and Travis Green, the head coach of the Vancouver Canucks.

"They're both players that had to sit in the coaches' room or in the locker room, and watch the video, watch the game, learn the systems, and learn about other teams," Maurice said. "There is an awareness, an interest in processing that kind of information and an ability to process that information."
Jokinen's 750 career points put him among the very best to come from Finland. He spent 137 of his 1,231 career NHL games in Winnipeg, with Maurice behind the bench for the final half of the 2013-14 season, Jokinen's last in the Manitoba capital.
"He kept asking if I had any interest in getting into coaching. He was really good with the veteran players, getting them involved with a lot of team stuff," said Jokinen, who has spent three years at the SFHA, and has aspirations of taking his coaching career to the next level.
"My goal is to coach at the highest possible level that there is which is the National Hockey League," he said. "I've had opportunities to go a few places, but I've said no. I feel that I'm not ready yet. Now I've started getting that itch. We'll see what happens."

Green is in his third season as the head coach of the Canucks. He earned that spot after four years coaching the Utica Comets in the American Hockey League.
The veteran spent his 970 NHL games with a total of six teams - the New York Islanders, Anaheim Ducks, Phoenix Coyotes, Boston Bruins, and the Toronto Maple Leafs.
He had two stints in Toronto, the first was a two season stretch between 2001 and 2003. It was also the final stop in his NHL playing career for 24 games in 2006-07.
That's where he met Maurice.
"I remember him telling me - it was near the end of my career and it was the year end meeting - you should be a coach," Green told Sportsnet's 31 Thoughts podcast in early March.
"That meant a lot to me."

Those conversations are always very honest. After all, being a coach is much different than being a player.
First, Maurice believes there should be at least a year of separation from a player being on the roster and in the room until he or she becomes a coach - especially if it's with the same team.
"It's a different animal. The players in the room can make the adjustment, the player/coach, the guy that walks into that room and he's not one of them anymore, there is a different feel," Maurice said. "You're not a player. Our relationship isn't always easy with players. There isn't tension there, but a new guy feels it."
Second, the time commitment is completely different than what players had during their careers.
"If you're talking about a guy who has played a 15-year NHL career, there is a cost to the family. The family's entire life is scheduled to that man's career," Maurice said. "Then you're going to go into coaching. You can add about four more hours in the morning on top of that, and another four hours in the afternoon. A lot of times, the family will say 'what are we doing now?' This is a whole other level of time commitment to it."
But if the game of hockey is a passion, coaching can be exactly what a player is looking for, especially when a career on the ice comes to a close.
"You're not going to casually roll into coaching as a player. It's too demanding, too time-consuming," Maurice said. "But if you're into it, that's the best part of it. It will consume you in a good way. It will occupy your mind. It will challenge your mind.
"At the very least, it will keep your life interesting."