Maurice enters the 2023-24 season with 817 career wins and an NHL-most 712 losses

When Paul Maurice was hired as the next head coach of the Florida Panthers, there was a mixed reaction among fans.

Many pointed to his career coaching record, which at the time was 775-670-130 with 99 ties, as the reason why Maurice wasn’t a good choice.

That’s because those 670 losses represent the most by any coach in league history.

He’d also won the seventh-most games (now the sixth-most after passing Al Arbour last season) and only three men have coached more games than Maurice: Scotty Bowman, Barry Trotz and Joel Quenneville.

In a series of posts, THN Florida is going over some of the myths that the Florida Panthers disproved (aka Mythbusters) during last season, and what myths the Panthers could bust this upcoming season.

Myth No. 2: Paul Maurice has the most regular season losses in NHL History, so he’s bound to fail with the Panthers

This one was always weird to me when I first heard this narrative. It’s true, Maurice does currently have the most losses in NHL coaching History with 712, which is 42 more than the next guy (Trotz, who now works in the Nashville front office as their GM). Some forget to point out that Mo has the sixth most coaching wins in NHL history. Still a long way to go if he ever wants to catch up to Bowman’s 1244 wins.

Maurice did get a bit of a head start, coaching in the NHL at age 28 in 1995 when he was the Head Coach of the then Hartford Whalers. By age 43, he became the youngest NHL coach in the history of the league to coach 1000 games; he is currently at 1766.

So how do you get to 712 regular season losses? By accumulating a whole bunch of years coaching, that’s how.

So, is that a lazy take? I think you know the answer.

However, it’s more than just the years of experience.

Maurice has been through it all, a team moving from one city to another (Hartford to Raleigh), facing off against one of the best teams ever assembled in the 2002 Detroit Red Wings, which Detroit and their nine Hall of Fame players defeated the Canes in five games, to being fired and then seeing that team hoist the Stanley Cup post-lockout (2006 Hurricanes). Let’s not forget that he had two seasons with the Toronto Maples Leafs where they were in the middle of a seven-year playoff drought, so there was more than just a Maurice problem while he was in town.

During his time in Winnipeg, the Jets made the playoffs more often than they didn’t, including three points off from winning the Presidents’ Trophy. Yes, we’re fully aware that in 25 seasons of coaching, his teams have missed the playoffs 15 times, to making it 10 times, but he busted that myth that he can’t get this Panthers team to play playoff style hockey, especially when it came to keeping his guys accountable. Do I need to remind you of that epic rant on March 29th in Toronto?

The previous game, Florida gave up 3 shorthanded goals against Ottawa and were in the middle of a four-game losing streak. Two nights later in Toronto, Maurice let his guys have it during a review of a goal, which ended up being called back.

The Panthers came from behind to win in OT and finished with a 6-1-1 record in their final eight games to get the final spot in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Once the postseason started, you saw who the more experienced coach was, especially in terms of when to make a goalie change. During the opening round against the heavily favored Boston bruins, Maurice made his move in the middle of Game 3. Bruins Head Coach Jim Montgomery made his change in the crease before a Game 7, winner-take-all scenario.

Montgomery has 195 games under his belt, but despite winning the Jack Adams Award and coaching the best regular season team ever, he was outcoached by Maurice. The Panthers ability to create scoring chances within 5 seconds of a turnover shell-shocked Boston, and the Panthers ability to slow games down and eventually win low scoring games proved that it was in fact a winning formula that got them to three wins away from winning a Stanley Cup. It's also worth mentioning that Maurice he is 4-0 all-time in Game 7’s in his career.