Paul Maurice reveals stunning reason why he quit the Jets last season

At this time last year, Paul Maurice didn’t know he would return to The NHL. In December 2021, the head coach shocked the world when he resigned from the Winnipeg Jets and quit hockey entirely. Nothing was really said about what led him to make that decision, but finally on Friday, Mike Zeisberger of NHL.com spoke with Maurice, who revealed what happened.

“This might be too much of a simplistic answer, but it’s true,” he told NHL.com. “I’d lost my love of the game. And it was affecting me. And I found it again.

“This has been a challenging year for everything we’ve went through. But at the same time it’s been fun for me.”

The new challenge came from the Florida Panthers, who hired him ahead of the 2022-23 season as they head coach. Despite a rocky season and a fight to make the playoffs, the Panthers are now in the second round, leading the matchup against the Toronto Maple Leafs 2-0. But when the call first came to take on the job, Maurice wasn’t sure he wanted it.

“It’s funny how life works. It was in very early June. Everything was perfect. I truly wasn’t missing anything. I wasn’t yearning for anything. I’d had two teams reach out to me from the time I stepped down to the time I’d stepped back. It was easy for me. I didn’t see a fit. I wasn’t interested. I’m good. And then Panthers GM Bill Zito called. And he said: ‘I’m just seeing what your interest is.’ And I said, ‘I’m interested in the Florida Panthers.’”

It was the first time for Maurice to jump back in the saddle, though he admitted how burned out he was when he left the Jets and people had no clue how bad it was.

“The answer is no. It’s also something I’m not going to go into detail about. The most succinctly I can put it is: I needed to be off the bench for me personally.”

Maurice is hard not to love. He is blunt and always honest in his postgame pressers and his current run in the postseason with the underdogs Panthers has been entertaining. And here again, in his interview with Zeisberger, you get more ammunition to love him even more.

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