Jets coach Maurice aware of high expectations

Jets coach Paul Maurice has seen the NHL landscape and knows how quickly a team’s road to success can be littered with not just bumps, but potholes.

Case in point: the Oilers and the Senators.

“I’ve been through it (his Carolina Hurricanes made the Cup final in 2002 and finished dead last in the NHL the next year) and I paid close attention to what Edmonton and Ottawa went through last year,” said Maurice, referencing two teams that were terrific in regular-season, went pretty deep in the playoffs in 2017, but saw the wheels come off last year with the bar raised far too high.

The Jets beat Nashville, then lost to the first-year Vegas Golden Knights in the Western Conference final after a 114-point season.

How do they replicate the emotion of last year? Maybe they can do it on the ice some nights, but on the streets here and around the rink, there won’t be a regularseason party atmosphere.

If they don’t win the Central Conference, no big deal, but they have to get into the playoffs.

“We understand the expectations around our club, and it’s my job to set a bar but a realistic bar,” said Maurice. “We can’t look at the Western final and say that’s our start (to this year). We have to go through the challenge and process. We lost five 30-year-olds from last year and we have a very young group.

“Five games in (Jets are 3-2), and some players aren’t doing what they did last year, but I think every team goes through that until mid- to late-November. Ronnie Francis used to come into my office in Carolina and say ‘OK, we get it, we’re not that good offensively, so we better start playing some defence.’ It was always the third week of November when he’d swing by and say ‘OK, we’ll play some defence,’ ” said a laughing Maurice.