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Hard work pays off Hurricanes' bench boss has paid his duesPosted: Monday June 03, 2002 8:17 PMBy Mike Ulmer, SLAM! Sports It was early 1985, and an 18-year-old kid named Paul Maurice was going home to Sault Ste. Marie. His right eye was in tatters and he had been just discharged from a Windsor hospital. Maurice played defence for the Windsor Spitfires of the Ontario Hockey League. A puck had hit the shaft of his stick and rocketed straight north. He was on his way home for counsel and sympathy. Flash forward six months. The announcement that the Philadelphia Flyers had chosen Paul Maurice at the NHL entry draft went unnoticed as the hockey men packed up their gear, gossiped about picks and debated the quality of late night room service. It is that way when you are chosen 252nd overall and, for the record, dead last in the 1985 entry draft. The top few picks get jerseys and a news conference. The middle choices get caps and a key chain. There is nothing for the final draftees but a handshake from the assistant to the assistant of vice president of scouting. Maurice's injury was one of two that induced the OHL to mandate eye visors a short time later. He still has a blind spot and suffers fuzziness on the right side of his field of vision. Still, he had returned to the ice. He understood the game, and captained his team. That was enough to prompt Philly's one-in-a-million shot. Maurice gamely contested two NHL training camps as a slight, vision-impaired defenceman. He was the guy other bigger players ran through to impress the Flyers bosses. "Let me tell you," Maurice said, "that was a lot of fun." Any realistic thought of playing in the NHL died when the team tendered a contract. The offer was for a pittance but the clincher was the written note paperclipped to the document. The note was from Maurice's agent and explained the contract terms. "They don't want you to sign it," it read. You know how the story ends, or at least, how it becomes most current. Maurice, was an excess overager with the Spitfires when goalie Pat Jablonski was sent down by the St. Louis Blues. The Spits, then owned by Compuware maven Peter Karmanos, made Maurice an offer. The team could trade him, or, if he liked, he was welcome to try his luck behind the bench. Thus began a profitable relationship for both men. When Karmanos operated an OHL franchise in Detroit, Maurice skipped across the bridge and won the role as coach. The year Karmanos landed an NHL franchise in Hartford, Maurice went along as an assistant. Twelve games into the 1995-96 season, the Whalers fired Paul Holmgren and installed Maurice as the head man. He has been there since, through the shift to Carolina from Hartford, through countless rumours about his imminent firing, including scads earlier in the season as the Hurricanes struggled. Now, he is in the Stanley Cup final in the Detroit area where he played and first cut his teeth as a coach. All this flowed from that decision to return to the Spitfires, a decision cemented by that trip home. On the drive, he thought about school, about whether he wanted to return to hockey. Mostly, he thought about how badly he felt. "I expected a lot of sympathy from my Dad and my brother Shane " Maurice said. "I want to tell you, there wasn't much." Poor one-eyed Paul Maurice took a seat. Directly beside him sat Shane, who hadn't had the use of his right eye since birth. The head of the table was reserved for Shane and Paul's father, Denis. As a schoolboy, he had lost his right eye when he was accidentally hit in the face by a shovel. Paul Maurice set sail from that table on to a road that has taken him to the top of his profession. Of all the ingredients for success he would have found in that kitchen, there wasn't a grain of sympathy. To this day, when Denis Maurice signs off his e-mails to his son and others, he includes a covert message about pity and disability. "That's ... Denis," he writes. "One n, one eye."
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