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Winnipeg Jets head coach Paul Maurice instructs Blake Wheeler (26), Andrew Ladd (16), Dustin Byfuglien (33) and Bryan Little (18) during overtime against the Colorado Avalanche during NHL hockey action in Winnipeg on October 26, 2014.

On the night he recorded his 500th career NHL win, Winnipeg Jets' coach Paul Maurice reflected back on the first one, which came when he was a 28-year-old novice with the Hartford Whalers. It was a 7-4 victory over what was then one of the newest NHL franchises, the San Jose Sharks.

According to Maurice, he and his wife Mitch hit the Burger King drive-through on the way home from the victory, a sign of the glamorous times that lay ahead. Then the Whalers lost their next four, early proof that coaching at the NHL level can be a challenging and humbling experience; and that you can never get too satisfied or impressed with yourself.

Maurice is the second-youngest coach in NHL history to reach 500 wins. At 47 years and 11 months, he was two years and eight months older than Scotty Bowman, when Bowman reached the milestone. The latest victory – 8-2 over the visiting Florida Panthers Tuesday night in a murderous stretch of games that sees the Jets play seven times in 11 nights – moved him into a tie with Toe Blake for 19th overall on the career wins list.

Next in line: The Hall of Famer, Pat Burns, at 501.

Burns, Maurice and Randy Carlyle, who was fired earlier this year soon after a loss to the Jets, have all had a turn behind the Maple Leafs' bench, trying to bring that elusive Stanley Cup to Toronto.

What's most remarkable about Maurice's record is that he has never really had a chance to work with a gold-plated Stanley Cup contender. The closest may have been his time the year he took the 2002 Carolina Hurricanes to the final, though that was mostly a triumph of perseverance and goaltending than pure talent. The Hurricanes missed the playoffs the next two years and then Maurice was gone.

But he has done an excellent job of working with the players at hand. Just this past week, Maurice marked exactly one year on the job in Winnipeg. He took over from Claude Noel on Jan. 12, 2014; had a great run early when the team won eight of its first 10, and finished the year 18-12-5, not enough to get them into the playoffs but enough for general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff to sign him to a four-year contract extension.

At 22-14-8, the Jets currently have the best record among the NHL's four Canadian-based Western Conference franchises, and are holding down the first wild-card playoff spot – this despite the fact that the team frequently starts a rookie Michael Hutchinson in goal; has been battered by injuries to its blueline corps; and has been without sniper Evander Kane at two different points of the season.

But the Jets have an underrated veteran group built around captain Andrew Ladd and the other night, got a four-goal performance out of Mathieu Perreault, a free-agent acquisition from the Anaheim Ducks.

The Jets don't shop at the NHL's equivalent of Rodeo Drive when it comes to free agents; they get the odd one here or there, but are required to draft and develop their core players. This is a challenge but Maurice genuinely embraces challenges (as opposed to some who pay lip service to challenges, but quietly grouse about the players put at their disposal).

The proof of his commitment, if any was needed, came during the most recent NHL lockout when Maurice opted to leave the comforts of a TV studio job with TSN to coach in Russia – in the steel town of Magnitogorsk. Maurice lived in a barracks – assistant coach Tom Barrasso was his primary company for the better part of a year.

Maurice went to Russia, he once told me, largely out of a spirit of adventure – that he'd been coaching all his adult life, never ventured to Europe on a Grand Tour the way some of his peers did; and wanted to see if he could coach a team where the vast majority of players didn't speak English.

How would that go? How would he cope?

In the end, Maurice believed it made him a better coach – and gave him a far clearer understanding of the challenges that a European player has when first arriving in North America; and a greater appreciation for the habits that become engrained in them throughout their development years, high-risk habits that sometimes have to be unlearned at the NHL level.

Fundamentally, he is a teacher – and the Jets' greatest strength since he arrived is learning how to play improved team defence.

Post-game Tuesday, Maurice thanked the Whalers' original brain trust, owner Peter Karmanos and general manager Jim Rutherford, for giving him a chance at an early age to "learn the job on the job, which you just don't get to do in the NHL. Those two guys are the reason I'm here at 500 today."

Karmanos, Rutherford - and all the players he'd coached for all the years.

"I wear a suit to the rink," said Maurice. "I never blocked a shot, never scored a goal. But I feel honoured to be in this league that long."

Maurice doesn't have a lot of memorabilia from the journey – jerseys from each team he coached, plus a handful of souvenir pucks.

"You get fired enough, you get a bunch of first pucks," said Maurice. "When I coached my 1,000th game, I didn't appreciate it for six months to a year after. I always felt that has as much to do with guys keeping you around a little bit and surviving. I think my family will enjoy this one. I hope they will."

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