“I’ve been on the power play since I stepped foot in this league,” the hulking winger said the other day, asked if he figured he’d be appointed a PP role when being dealt to the Bruins from the Wild at the March 8 trade deadline. “So I’m used to it.”
Long ago, in his early days with the Ducks, the now-36-year-old Maroon rolled out on the No. 1 unit, usually in the bumper (pass/shoot) role, working with Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry. Elite company for a kid who toiled five years in the AHL and was in his mid-20s when he finally got his crack at The Show.
In Edmonton, prior to winning the Cup for the first time with St. Louis (2019), Maroon was on the Oilers’ second power-play unit, camped at the net front, providing relief for Milan Lucic. Had Lucic’s circumstances played out differently with the Bruins this season, it’s fair to assume that he’d occupy the net-front role now, and Maroon probably wouldn’t be wearing Black and Gold. Who knows, Maroon might be in a Leafs sweater right now. The margins in the game, like the play at the net, are narrow and forever changing.
There’s no telling what impact Maroon will prove to have on the Bruins’ postseason run. He is very much a throwback in today’s game, a classic big man in a game full of 5-11 speedy kids, but one still with ample footspeed to support a meaningful forecheck. Also one with sufficient width of shoulder and hip to bang his way down low and make himself a pain in the neck for goaltenders and penalty-killing defensemen.
“Be a good screen, be a bad goalie,” said Maroon, summing up his role around the blue paint. “Recover pucks on rebounds for second and third chances, when [the puck] comes to me, have good hands.”
For a guy with three Cup rings, there is decidedly a chip on Maroon’s shoulder. It’s as obvious as his game, straight ahead, no frills, no need for Freudian interpretation.
“I have good hands, right, that I think a lot of people don’t give me credit for,” noted Maroon. “I’ve done well in this league. Everyone just looks at me like I’m some plug, but, I just think I have good hands, good vision, when the puck comes to me I’ve got to act quick, make good decisions and be utilized that way.”
Rarely in today’s sports industry, hockey or otherwise, does anyone offer such a blunt review, be it of one’s own skills, or in this case what someone else thinks of those skills. Granted, there are worse, more demeaning things to be called than a “plug.”
Nonetheless, and not surprisingly, ego typically plays a large part in an athlete’s mind, and often can factor in the player’s success.
Asked if being viewed as a plug angers him, Maroon said, “No, not really. I really don’t care. Personally, I just don’t give a [expletive].”
Is it a motivating force in his game?
“Yeah, I’ve been told that since I was 12 years old,” said Maroon, who needed two years in lower-rank junior hockey (NAHL) before making his way to OHL London. He spent a year with the Knights and finished as their top scorer.
Did others doubting him serve as motivation?
“Absolutely,” he said. “I don’t really care what people think of me. I’m in the same league as them, when there’s noise around you, and people have no faith in you, sometimes you just play better and you shove it up their [expletive]. But listen, I’ve been called so many things in my career, umm, it never really bothered me. You’ve just got to rise above it, be a bigger person, don’t really give a [expletive] what people think of you, what they say. Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. Just focus on yourself and what you can do.”
As Montgomery continues to sort out the power play, Maroon’s reps on either unit can be expected to come and go. He was not utilized at all in that role in Game 3. For the most part, he has filled a fourth-line role, keeping up impressively with speedsters Jesper Boqvist and Johnny Beecher. In Game 1, Maroon delivered the big hit that sent defenseman Timothy Liljegren over the boards at the Bruins bench. That physical presence is Maroon’s greatest value to a team that had trouble mustering such gumption during the regular season. His handiwork around the net, power play or not, is the prize in the box of Cracker Jacks.
“That’s what he’s good at,” said Montgomery, when asked about the big hit on Liljegren. “You know, making subtle plays that build the team game — and what he’s really good at, what we’ve noticed is, a lot like Nick Foligno, a lot of positive talk and a lot of reinforcement of the what the game plan is, he really grabs his linemates, both Beecher and Boqvist, positive reinforcement of what they’re going to do on the next shift, not what just happened.”
THE INS AND OUTS
Coaching changes for Sabres, Sharks
Lindy Ruff is on his way back behind the Sabres bench. David Quinn is out as the Sharks’ bench boss. Round and round goes the NHL coaching merry-go-round.
The harder one to digest is the Ruff redux in Buffalo, where he stood watch over what was once a formidable lineup backed by the otherworldly Dominik Hasek. Yes, we really are 25 years past the Sabres losing in Game 6 of the 1999 Cup Final vs. Dallas (with Brett Hull’s skate in the . . . oh, never mind).
The Sabres are desperate for a franchise reboot. They have not not been in the playoffs since 2011, when Ruff was still their coach. Bringing him back now, at 64, has to feel so “yesterday” to a fan base aching for a better “tomorrow.” “He knows how to win,” said beleaguered Sabres owner Terry Pegula at Ruff’s re-intro press conference. “He knows how to take a team to another level.”
OK, look, Ruff has been a solid NHL coach, and his Sabres teams made it to three other conference finals beyond Cup Final run in ‘99. His extended tours with Dallas and New Jersey (fired there just days before this year’s trade deadline) were decidedly unspectacular.
The Sabres have some tantalizing young talent, including Alex Tuch, Rasmus Dahlin, Owen Power, and ol’ Lindy is new-age enough to know you can’t treat the working help the way he was treated as a late-20th century defenseman for the Sabres.
“You just can’t be yelling and screaming at players anymore,” he said at the press conference.
But what Ruff has yet to prove in the new-age NHL is that he can connect with and motivate skilled kids who have yet to grasp the true grind of the game. No doubt he knows it all, but can he get them to believe it and buy in? If not, more pain ahead for the Crossed Swords.
In San Jose, it had to be hard for general manager Mike Grier to send Quinn, a fellow Boston University Terrier, out the door (albeit with a year’s pay still coming). Quinn, 57, twice now has been left holding the whistle on clubs in the midst of massive roster transition. The circumstances were somewhat different with the Rangers than the Sharks, but in both instances his tools at hand made it difficult to compete.
Grier’s plan from Day 1 was to strip down the lineup and start anew. He followed through, dumping pricey pieces such as Erik Karlsson (to Pittsburgh), Timo Meier (to New Jersey), and Tomas Hertl (now living a best life in Vegas). Grier obviously was not convinced, after two years of watching day to day, that Quinn was the right guy to lead the renaissance with a reworked lineup, one that still needs Grier to enhance greatly via free agency or trade.
Next man up for the Sharks? How about two men? Ex-Sharks favorite Marco Sturm has spent the last two seasons as head coach at AHL Ontario (Calif.). Prior to there, Sturm, 45, spent four years as an assistant on the Kings’ staff.
A smart play for Grier could be to reunite Claude Julien and Sturm, with Julien in charge and Sturm as associate coach. Sturm played three of his five seasons in Boston under Julien’s watch. They’d make a solid duo, ideally with Sturm ultimately transitioning to the top spot in 2-3 years with order restored.
ETC.
Pair of difficult losses for game
Two humongous losses in the NHL world with the deaths in recent days of ex-referee Wally Harris and Canadian broadcasting legend Bob Cole.
Harris, 88, worked in the game’s one-referee era and was a master for having the feel of the game — setting and defining the rulebook margins for the players, making clear what he would and would not tolerate in terms of penalties and general shenanigans. In those days, it was largely a league of shenanigans, with lots of fights, bench-clearing brawls, and rivers of blood. Harris always held order.
When Harris was “on the whistle,” games had pace, emotion, contact, everything there is to love about it, and players largely accepted and played within the parameters he set. If not, they cooled out in the penalty box or the shower — their choice. Games moved along.
“Take the best players in the world and put them out on the ice,” Harris told the Los Angeles Times nearly a half-century ago, as NHL historian Dave Stubbs noted in his splendid Harris obituary on nhl.com. “If you don’t have a referee to run the show properly, you don’t have much of a game. If he called every infraction, you wouldn’t have many players on the ice or fans in the stands. If he let them go wild, it would be a riot. Being able to do the job right is rewarding.”
Cole, 90, with his distinctive voice and delivery, entertained on par with, if not greater than, the games he covered. He had great reverence for the game and its players, his mere presence at the microphone lending a night’s aura to the event.
Because he worked on Canadian TV, Cole’s reach in the US was minimized. The only comp that comes close would be those fortunate enough to have heard Vin Scully calling a World Series game. Because of the vast difference in the pace and emotion of the two sports, Cole had a faster, more exciting delivery, but the two were masters of the craft and consummate pros.
Cole routinely dotted exciting moments with his trademark calls of “Oh, baby!” And in those most frenetic moments of sweet mayhem, with the puck ringing off the crossbar, big hits being dealt in the slot and along the boards, with players changing on the fly amid the chaos, Cole would blurt out, “Everything is happening!” It was perfection.
Within hours of each other, two of the game’s classiest, most unique, and most talented performers — one on the ice and one above it — bid adieu. Fitting in some ways, and inexplicably sad for the millions who admired their work.
Loose pucks
On April 2, lost in another DNQ of a Sabres season, winger Jeff Skinner logged his 1,000th regular-season game. The ex-Hurricanes first-round pick (No. 7, 2010) is one of only 394 NHLers to reach the plateau. He also became the lone player in league history to reach 1,000 and yet to appear in a single playoff game. Acquired from Carolina in August 2018, the Sabres gave up a package that included the draft pick the Hurricanes used to select Pyotr Kochetkov, their No. 1 goalie much of the season. Skinner has three more years remaining on his deal, carrying a cap hit of $9 million. He turns 32 next month. Age and price tag make him tough to move, but it would be nice if he could land somewhere to get a taste of Stanley Cup play . . . Here come the Hawks! Ex-Chicago draft pick (No. 11, 2013) Robin Press, a 6-4 Swedish backliner, won the KHL Gagarin Cup this past week with Mettalurg Magnitogorsk (4-0 sweep over Lokomotiv). The 29-year-old right-shot also led his club in postseason points (3-14–17). Brilliant in net for Magnitogorsk: Ilya Nabokov, who yielded only three goals in the sweep. Nabokov, 21, is eligible for the June NHL draft and is ranked by Central Scouting as the second-best international goalie . . . The Bruins and Maple Leafs averaged a combined 112.33 hits in Games 1-3. Entering the weekend, that led the league, but by a very thin margin, ahead of Kings-Oilers (109.57) and Panthers-Lightning (109.52). On March 7, the night before the trade deadline, there were 12 NHL games, and the average combined hit count was 47.5 . . . Pat Maroon, for all his size, versatility, and truculence, never has had a payday bigger than the three-year deal (annual cap hit $2 million) that he signed with Anaheim for 2015-18. He went on to sign four short-term deals covering the next six seasons, 2023-24 included, averaging $1.09 million . . . Along with coach David Quinn, the Sharks also fired head trainer Ray Tufts, who’d been on the ice-and-tape patrol for more than two decades. The Sharks lost a whopping 429 man games to injury this season . . . Oct. 26, 1980, I’m in the press box at Winnipeg Arena for Bruins vs. Jets, where the Bruins have blown a 6-4 lead with US Olympic hero Jim Craig in net. Harris is on the whistle, the Jets clinging to a 7-6 lead. Wayne Cashman, set up by Steve Kasper, cruises down the slot and pots the 7-7 equalizer with 3:44 to go. From high above ice level, it sure looks like Cashman gloves the puck and flings it by goalie Lindsay Middlebrook. Good goal, says Harris, and the night ends with Jets fans huffing and puffing their way out of the barn. The winks and giggles in the Bruins room confirm that Cashman got away with a sleight of hand. “Wally called it the way he called the rest of the game,” said Cashman, “and the fans didn’t object to that.”
Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at kevin.dupont@globe.com.
