Sault native Paul Maurice has resigned as head coach of the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets.
The news came via an announcement from the team Friday morning.
Assistant coach Dave Lowry will take over on an interim basis.
Maurice said the decision was based on his feeling that a “new voice” was needed.
“This is a good team. I’m a good coach, but sometimes when you take over a team and it’s kind of like you’re starting at the bottom of a mountain and you’re pushing a rock up to the top and you can only get it to a certain place,” Maurice told reporters during a media availability this morning. “That’s where I feel I’m at. I’m better positioned than anyone to know that they need a new voice. They haven’t quit on me. They’re a good bunch of men. My relationship is strong with all of them.”
“When you have a 26-year professional hockey coaching career, you know,” Maurice added. “They need a new voice. They need somebody to help them get to that place. It doesn’t need to be necessarily a more experience or more talented guy. It needs to be a different voice because it’s the right time for it and I know that.”
Maurice also said that the pandemic, playing in a bubble upon returning to action without fans in the arenas is not enjoyable.
“Going back to the bubble, to the lockout year, I didn’t enjoy it,” Maurice said. “And that’s the very first time in my career I can say I didn’t enjoy coming to the rink and I thought maybe it was all of what was going on.”
Maurice added that the Jets adding defencemen Brenden Dillon and Nate Schmidt in the off season rekindled the fire for him, but it hasn’t been enough.
“I got fired up,” Maurice said.
“It you lose some of that passion for the game, the love of the game, you can still be good, but you can’t be as good as you should be, or you could be and that’s where I feel I am.”
The 54-year-old coached 600 games with the Jets in nine seasons, including leading the team to a 13-10-5 record this season, and had coached just under 1,700 NHL games.
Maurice became the second-youngest head coach in NHL history when he took over as coach of the Hartford Whalers on Nov. 7, 1995, taking over for Paul Holmgren. He was 28 years old at the time.
Maurice’s 775 wins is sixth all time and he is fourth all time in games coached at 1,684.
Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff confirmed that Lowry will remain as interim coach for the rest of the season.
The players deserve that continuity,” Cheveldayoff said, adding that Lowry would be in the mix potentially to take the job over full time.