It wasn’t all that long ago Paul Maurice was kind of on a Peter DeBoer career track as a recognized recyclable behind the bench, but slightly less successful.

Now, Maurice, who won the Stanley Cup last year in Florida on his fifth team after having coached 1,849 regular-season games, has become Yoda.

Though DeBoer doused himself with gasoline and self-immolated in Dallas after a third consecutive conference finals defeat — in which the coach humiliated franchise goaltender Jake Oettinger after pulling him 7:09 into a do-or-die Game 5 because the Oilers had scored twice on two uncontested shots, then pointed the finger at him in the post-mortem.

There was no world in which the coach was going to be able to return and command the room after that. The decision to pull Oettinger in favor

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