New Leafs Coach Ready To Tackle Job Pressures
Posted September 14, 2006 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Paul Maurice has been around long enough to know that his position at the epicentre of the hockey universe will eventually take a mental toll. The replacement for Pat Quinn is fully aware of the pressures that rest on his shoulders as the Toronto Maple Leafs prepare for the upcoming season.
“I know it’s coming, but I don’t feel any pressure yet,” he said. “If you’re going to win on the big stage, there’s going to be some pressure there to do it.”
At the top of Maurice’s agenda is improving the collective quickness of the team, and giving captain Mats Sundin the amount of ice time he not only craves, but seems to thrive on.
“I’ve always had players in those roles play an awful lot of minutes relative to the rest of the league,” Maurice said Thursday. “The three TV time-outs during games, charter flights, better nutrition — all those things point to your better players playing more.
“The biggest thing though is that there’s not the same price to be paid to play hockey as there was two years ago. Mats Sundin, to get to the front of the net two years ago, had to give back five sticks by the time he got to the bench. The wear and tear on these guys has changed.”
Maurice hasn’t, however, determined who will play with the Swedish centre on the first line.
“Who Mats plays with is not the most important question to answer,” Maurice said. “He’s going to play with a lot of different people over the course of the year.
“There’s times you leave lines together because you know there’s chemistry there and you want to let them work through it, but we’ll ask Mats to be our best player most nights and if the people around him aren’t going then you make adjustments. Mats Sundin is here to make the players around him better, and he’s good enough to.”
As for his predictions on how the season will unfold, Maurice has one objective — making it into the fight for Lord Stanley.
“It’s a dogfight now for everybody to get into the playoffs,” he said. “My biggest concern outside of hockey is controlling the emotional rollercoaster our team will go on based on the interest in the team.
“That’s part of being here — managing that rollercoaster. I understand that we’re going to be in a dogfight to make the playoffs. That’s hard for home-town fans to hear but it’s the (reality) of the N.H.L.”
