TORONTO -- Paul Maurice knows from two seasons as coach of the Maple Leafs how difficult a market Toronto can be when the team is losing.
The pressure, he says, is real.
"If you're saying something good about a player, he's a rock star, and if a guy has a tough night and you want to deal with the media honestly, you've got to be careful about how hard you go at his play because then the next day or maybe even that day, it's a drive-by shooting," Maurice said Friday after the Winnipeg Jets' practice.
"They'll find something that's not going and it's 40 people in the stall figuring out whether they should trade him, play him more or execute him."
Maurice, a Jack Adams Award contender as coach of the year this season with Winnipeg, didn't make the playoffs in his two years with the Leafs, missing by one point in 2006-07. He said the market doesn't change the pressure of winning but does affect a coach trying to control his message within the locker-room.
"It takes a while to get a handle on it. I don't know that I ever did," Maurice said. "I thought Pat Quinn was probably the best at it because for the most part everybody was a little afraid of him.
"He might've come across the podium so that helped. And then I think he also got to the point he really didn't care, so he said what he wanted."
Maurice, who has been head coach of the Hartford Whalers, Carolina Hurricanes (twice), Leafs and Jets, said there's a difference between Toronto, the other Canadian markets, traditional U.S. ones and then the non-traditional ones.
One key to playing or coaching in Toronto, Maurice said, was having a keen awareness of what the market is like.
"Certain guys are really good at working the market here and certain guys weren't," Maurice said. "It can have an effect on how you're viewed as a player in the market."
