In any discussion of the firing of Paul Maurice as head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs you need to understand one thing: it had nothing to do with what is right or fair.
In any discussion of the firing of Paul Maurice as head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs you need to understand one thing: it had nothing to do with what is right or fair.
It doesn't even matter whether or not he is a good coach (he is) or a good man (he is that as well).
Maurice was fired because the Leafs are going in a different direction at the top; and that means whoever comes in as president or as president and general manager will be working with a clean sheet of paper.
That's important on several levels; and it shows prospective candidates for the top job that they will indeed have a free hand to not only hire a coach (something former GM John Ferguson never really had) but also to convince prospective candidates that unabridged freedom is indeed part of what the Leafs are offering.
Any one paying close attention to the so-called "most-wanted job in hockey" can see that the top job in what Brian Burke once referred to as "the Vatican of hockey" isn't going to be an easy one to fill. In case you missed it, Burke's not coming and a great many people behind the scenes tell me that Ken Holland of the Detroit Red Wings hasn't been sending any "pick me" signals either. Same goes for Montreal's Bob Gainey and New Jersey's Lou Lamoriello.
Sources tell me that David Poile of the Nashville Predators, a man who could actually do the kind of "start over" job the franchise truly needs, isn't responding to feelers even though he's so close to interim GM Cliff Fletcher. One might think Poile and Fletcher would enjoy working together in the same way that a son loves joining a father on a long-held family business card.
The trend carries on throughout the upper echelon of the NHL. There's feigned interest, even genuine interest on some fronts, but even after hiring the well-respected attorney Gord Kirke to be point man on the search committee (and even though Kirke has made the rounds assuring hockey insiders that things will change at Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment) the search is no further along than when Ferguson got fired.
The primary reason is that the truly great candidates, the ones who are truly good at their jobs, already have pretty good gigs and are quite happy where they are right now, thank you very much. Burke might have been something of an exception to that scenario. He was the media's darling for the, but ownership in Anaheim said no and the rest is forever open to speculation.
In any event, time has shown that good men with Stanley Cup rings on their fingers and a willingness to come to Toronto are hard to find; and even those who don't have rings or those who do but who have been away from the game for awhile (former New York Rangers GM Neil Smith comes immediately to mind) could still be classified as, shall we say, skeptical. So if the Maurice firing proves anything it's that MLSE is attempting to at least reduce that skepticism.
No one believes that management/ownership in Toronto won't be the meddlesome, interfering, back-stabbing, leak leaking and driven by agendas group that have shown themselves to have precious little knowledge as to how to go about winning the Stanley Cup or even satisfying the long-suffering but ever loyal fan base.
In that context, firing Maurice can be viewed as at the very least a tentative first step in sending out a message that maybe the powers that be down at One Make a Megabuck Place are at least attempting to put some of that doubt to rest.
Now it would be logical to assume that if Maurice were the second coming of Scott Bowman, Toe Blake or even Punch Imlach, that the Leafs might have waited just a tad longer before pulling the plug on the 41-year-old career coach, but he's not. His Toronto record (76-66-22) was decent given the talent level, but it's not the stuff that says hold on come hell or highly regarded general manager candidates.
Still, it should be noted that in firing him the Leafs did what was best not just for them but for Maurice as well.
Maurice hadn't done what he was hired to do. He didn't get the Leafs to the playoffs in the time allotted. That's not entirely his fault, this was a team of very limited talent, but he has to take at least a part of the blame.
In firing him now, with a year left on his contract, management gave Maurice some respect. He has time to make a decision regards his future. It might be able to come sooner rather than later given that there are jobs available now (the Florida Panthers would seem like a good fit). It might come when there may be more openings on the horizon.
That was reasonable and respectful and befits a man of Maurice's character and contributions.
The board made a decision and kept it from the public until after they executed it, very unlike what transpired around the firing of Ferguson. That too is a message to others that the people in charge have started to absorb some of the lessons in regards how things work in the hockey world.
These things might not seem like any great achievement to long suffering Leafs fans who wanted changes long before management even thought they might be necessary, but it is a good first step.
As Fletcher said, this was done in a timely fashion. Meaning there is time to hire a new general manager, time to have that person hire his coach and, though he didn't give mouth to these words, time, perhaps for the first time, to reflect on the fact that the Leafs really are trying to do the right thing and may have actually learned enough from past mistakes to go about doing it the right way.
It's not an easy task and Maurice might be regarded as just one of many casualties along the way, but in firing him now it showed that at the very least it was done logically and with some consideration regards the fact that Maurice the coach and Maurice the man and his family deserved respect and got it.
He might not see it that way just now, but that's the way it happened.
You can be certain that people in the hockey world outside the centre of the hockey universe also took note.
