Gene Principe and Mark Spector look ahead to a winner-take-all showdown with the Stanley Cup on the line, as the Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers clash in Game 7.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — During one of his 100-some media sessions during what will be a 65-day playoff grind, Paul Maurice notices the attire of a questioner.
“Like the hat,” the head coach of the Florida Panthers says, dryly. Which is how Maurice says most things.
The reporter’s cap is emblazoned with the perfect logo of the flawed Hartford Whalers, the franchise that gave Maurice his first job in the league that competes for the Stanley Cup, which will soon be hoisted and kissed and taken for a gleaming twirl on a legacy-defining Monday night at the edge of the Everglades.
The stories of our sports heroes are written large in a Game 7.
So, too, are the tales of goats.
And while the tell-the-grandkids legends of resurrected Edmonton Oilers Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl and Stuart Skinner and Zach Hyman and the rest might well begin with the Miracle of ’24, we’ll argue that no singular reputation of an individual involved in the 1,400th and final hockey game of this never-ending season has more on the line than Maurice.
From the Florida side, we’ll listen to your case for the suddenly slumping Sergei Bobrovsky, a borderline Hall of Famer and the club’s oldest player. Or even in-house goaltending czar Roberto Luongo, whose only rings are Olympic. But Aleksander Barkov, Gustav Forsling, Matthew Tkachuk and the rest still have runway.
An Oilers victory — the first reverse sweep since Bing Crosby ruled the living-room radio — would cement the historic for McDavid & Co. But that core is firmly in its prime, and rookie head coach Kris Knoblauch has all of 93 NHL games on his résumé.
Hey, win or lose, they gave us a ride.
No, it’s Maurice whose place in the game’s lore will be most defined by the numbers frozen on the Amerant Bank Arena Jumbotron over the shredded ice and tears.
The affable hockey lifer will either become the longest-serving coach in pro sports to win his first championship, or he will oversee the greatest title collapse of any living pro coach.
Couple that with Maurice’s dubious all-time NHL coaching record for most losses (736), and it’s a hell of an investment into 60 minutes (or more) when the guy’s feet won’t even touch the ice until it’s time to shake hands and swell up with grief or joy.
Pick one.
“Every coach is different,” Maurice said, on the day before his Cats began their leap to a 3-0 lead and two weeks before they’d let it settle at 3-3. “And it seems to me, as you age, you get a different perspective on life and what’s important and valuable.
“I need to win one.