An Afternoon With Mo: Part 2

Last Thursday I brought you all Part 1 of a recap of an interview with former Hurricanes’ coach Paul Maurice on SiriusXM radio on Breakaway with Jamie Shalley. If you missed that post and want to catch up, click here. Maurice had so many things to say during the half-hour that I had to bring you a second part! Some folks seemed to think writing about this meant I was somehow wistful for the Maurice days. Absolutely not! I am very excited about Coach Kirk Muller and the new direction of the team. I may not care for the man as our coach but that doesn’t mean he isn’t an engaging guy or doesn’t have some interesting things to say.

Last week I mentioned Maurice talked a lot about young players such as Justin Faulk and Jeff Skinner and player development, but he also had plenty of things to say about officiating. Mo likes when officials go with the flow of the game as to what they are going to call. In other words he is okay with them putting the whistle away at certain points, especially in these playoff contests. I am not a big fan of that because to me if something is a penalty in the first it should be a penalty in the third. Yes. I am a very black and white person. But this isn’t about me.

He said in the previous years coaches and teams were more likely to have a relationship with the officials. As he put it, the officials “used to know the bench.” He said this has changed in the last 4-5 years and it is not the same. He also discussed what happens if there was a disagreement with a referee’s call. I thought it was interesting that Mo focused on the same thing as Nashville’s coach Barry Trotz did in a prior week’s interview. He said he has watched calls on a replay and had to go back to the official later and apologize for arguing a call that turned out to be correct. That is a side of coaches I think the fans rarely see. (I wonder if John Tortorella ever does that. Hmm…)

The games that have become out of control were also a point of conversation, and Maurice talked about officials being able to get a handle on these matches. He said he felt that they should use the 10 minute misconduct to control scrums and deal with things like the Rich Peverly stick swinging incident from the first round of the playoffs. A two-minute penalty has minimal impact as the guys know they are going right back on the ice. A 10 minute misconduct would have a larger impact. I agree with him. If a player knows they are only going to serve 2 minutes they may weigh the consequences and decide it is worth it. It also does not really give anyone time to cool down before coming back on the ice. After watching the Kings and Blues last night in a penalty-go-round (110 Penalties in Minutes!) his thoughts on misconducts really hit home.

The other topic that was addressed during the show was special teams. The caller actually was calling about the Blackhawks lack of production on the power play in round 1. Paul Maurice stated that of course you need to get shots and traffic in front of the net on a power play, but emphatically said that the goalie is the difference maker and the key to special teams.

I hope you enjoyed the recap of the interview with Maurice. Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate the audio from the show but it was a little more lively than my recap!

There is no off-season at Cardiac Cane!  Find us on Facebook. We’re tuned into the NHL playoffs, OHL playoffs, the Kelly Cup and waiting for the IIHF World Championships . We just like hockey! Find us on Twitter:@Esbee92, @CardiacCaneFS, @caniac176 , @CaniacCaz and @peacelovepuck.