FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Paul Maurice stops himself after the first syllable, as he thinks over the words that he’s saying, the emotions that he’s describing. He thinks better of what he has started.

“I was at pea—” Maurice begins. He pauses.

“I could manage it mentally,” he clarifies. “That’s a better way to put it instead of saying I was at peace with it. I could manage it. And then this just happened.”

Maurice was out of hockey back then, in the first half of 2022, having left his job as head coach of the Winnipeg Jets of his own volition on Dec. 17, 2021. He had stepped down, citing the fact that the team needed a new voice, needed something that he wasn’t providing. He considered himself, effectively, retired.

Six months later, Florida Panthers general manager Bill Zito called.

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