It wasn’t all that long ago Paul Maurice was kind of on a Peter DeBoer career track as a recognized recyclable behind the bench, but slightly less successful.
Now, Maurice, who won the Stanley Cup last year in Florida on his fifth team after having coached 1,849 regular-season games, has become Yoda.
Though DeBoer doused himself with gasoline and self-immolated in Dallas after a third consecutive conference finals defeat — in which the coach humiliated franchise goaltender Jake Oettinger after pulling him 7:09 into a do-or-die Game 5 because the Oilers had scored twice on two uncontested shots, then pointed the finger at him in the post-mortem.
There was no world in which the coach was going to be able to return and command the room after that. The decision to pull Oettinger in favor of Casey DeSmith was preposterous, and the postgame doubling-down on it was unbecoming.
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