The end of this clip is why Paul Maurice is the greatest coach of all time in any sport, in one specific category: lectern domination. The whole thing is worth a watch, as all his pressers are, pregame, postgame or even off-day, but the last 10 seconds are killer, especially if you keep in mind that his team just lost a chance to clinch a trip to the Stanley Cup Final by playing a game he admitted he "didn't like."
His secret is simple. He doesn't view the interview process as a proctology exam. Even the most insipid questions get a thoughtful response, or at least one that sounds like it is thoughtful. And let's be clear: Most pregame, postgame and off-day questions lean hard into the insipid. There are only so many things one can discern and distill into a useful insight that can be turned into a question that elicits its own useful insight, and if there are, they are largely wasted at the lectern, or as it is more accurately put now, the long table with one microphone and two bottles of a sponsored drink that is never touched.
Most of the time, coaches regard the process with outward disdain, dismissiveness, even overt hatred, because their time is so precious (what are they going to do instead, have another beer in the coaches' office?) that they should not be subjected to the hesitant inquiries of underbeings who shouldn't even be allowed in the building. Mostly, they view it as a way to bully people who cannot fight back and largely don't want to.
The reward for this thick-necked muscle work, of course, is a monsoon of second-guessing, hot-seat rumors, and in some cases extra-fizzy schadenfreude when they are eventually fired by people who actually know less about what they do than the medioids they bully. And eventually they all either end up dismissed, forgotten or, worse, Bill Belichick.
There are, conversely, a few coaches who embrace the notion as a way to politely sway the mood of a room, and make the entire process so effortlessly smooth that they sleep each night with the benefit of the doubt cuddled beside. There is an intellectual exercise involved here in accepting the question, distilling it internally in a second or two, and delivering a response that makes everyone feel a bit less ignoble for participating.
For instance, Maurice was mocked after Game 3 of the Carolina series for saying the games were far closer than the scores (5-2, 5-0 and 6-2) indicated, but he didn't get chesty when the pushback came. He merely pointed out for maybe the thousandth time the truthiest truth of all the truths about the sport he has devoted his adult life to: Every minute of every game hangs on chance and persistence more than skill and planning, and he knows better than to assume what everyone else knew to be true, that the series was over after three games.
But it's the wry softness of his voice that makes even the most barbed-wire response carry the tone of an amiable give-and-take. He accepts as a given the basic fact that everyone in the room has a job to do, and his is to give a bit more than the minimum answer because he actually wants the questioner to learn something, even if it's the same bit of information he just gave a question ago, a day ago, a game ago, or a job ago.
Why does he want that? Because the energy expended in being angry about having to speak to the scaly uninformed proles isn't worth the time lost building up the phony anger to begin with. Because if everyone leaves the interview room entertained and informed, fewer of them leave trying to concoct reasons for firing him three days after the season ends. And finally, because none of them can fire him anyway. That's a job left to a billionaire who isn't even in the room, or a billionaire's servant who probably isn't there either.
Maurice, after all, has been at this for nearly 30 years, which is amazing when you consider that he is only 58. Maybe it helps that he has spent only two years in a shark-infested media room (Toronto), but he managed to do those two years making only two potential enemies: the guy who hired him (John Ferguson Jr.), and the guy who fired him (Cliff Fletcher) for not fixing the talent-deficient Leafs in record time. Maybe it's just that Maurice has figured out that his work is not that intricate or dangerous to begin with. He vibes "calm down, it's just hockey" without ever treating it that way.
Thus, after a moderate stinker like Monday night's 3-0 loss at home to Carolina prolonged the series to at least five games, he could maintain an outward mellowness that belied what we suspect will be a spicily profane practice today. After all, he's also the guy who did this, and this, and finally this. He does, in fact, know those words.
In sum, Maurice is the guy who can be thanked for his time in a tedious presser after a galling defeat and say with the proper amount of sarcasm, "And thank you for your time." Even when he doesn't mean it, he sounds like he could. That's a grossly underutilized skill and one that allows him to work for three decades, survive coaching in Hartford, Raleigh, Magnitogorsk, Toronto, Winnipeg, and South Florida, and still sound like he enjoys the whole gig, even the media stuff they all profess to hate. He may be the one who is best at the hardest job of all, in a business like sports that uses misery as its principal motif—showing that it isn't.
