New life with old coach

Toronto's Paul Maurice rescues former Canes Bates Battaglia and Jeff O'Neill from hockey purgatory

Ask Bates Battaglia if he ever would have thought five years ago that his NHL career would be reborn through the intervention of Paul Maurice, and the reply comes quickly.

"No," Battaglia says. "That's a flat no, an easy answer."

The tumultuous relationship that characterized their six years together with the Carolina Hurricanes has been forgotten with the Toronto Maple Leafs, where both are enjoying the second acts of their careers amid a Hurricanes family reunion in the self-proclaimed Center of the Hockey Universe that's putting the "we" in weird.

Maurice and assistant coach Randy Ladouceur will be behind the bench and Jeff O'Neill and Battaglia on the wings when the Leafs visit Raleigh on Friday.

Not only did the boy-wonder coach end up with the most coveted job in hockey after he was fired from the only job he thought he'd ever have, two of the players who chafed at his methods most while he was in Carolina are trying to resurrect their NHL lives under his guidance.

This unlikely concordance of career paths seems stolen from a telenovela, but it's merely an odd twist of hockey fate played out on the game's biggest stage.

Maurice always wanted more from Battaglia with the Hurricanes, particularly after Battaglia scored a career-high 21 goals in 2001-02. But a series of trades and disappointing seasons saw Battaglia slip out of the NHL, unwanted when the lockout ended.

He was ready to play in Europe when Maurice offered him the chance to join him with Toronto's American Hockey League team. When Maurice made the jump from Toronto's farm team to the big club in the summer, he brought the revitalized player with him.

"The whole year not playing in the NHL, I realized where I was and what I had, playing with and against the best players in the world, and I wasn't able to do that last year," Battaglia said. "It was tough. It definitely gets you determined to do what you need to do."

Still a Raleigh resident in the offseason and part-owner of the Glenwood South bar Lucky B's, Battaglia always was one of the most visible and popular Hurricanes.

On a Leafs team full of high-priced veterans, Battaglia isn't fighting for a top-line spot the way he did in Carolina, when he was a crucial part of the famed "BBC Line" during the 2002 playoffs. He has reinvented himself as a fourth-line energy forward, external expectations lower, internal expectations substantially higher.

"He's a good player, but somewhere along the way, something happened," Hurricanes general manager Jim Rutherford said. "He lost a little bit of focus. I've seen that happen to lots of players, and you have to give Bates a lot of credit.

"He played in the minors, and, fortunately for him, the coach he played for got the NHL job. That gives you a foot in the door, and Bates is a good enough player to take that opportunity. I've seen a number of Toronto games, and he's played very well, better than his stats would indicate."

O'Neill knows all about expectations. He struggled last season to deal with the sudden death of his older brother. He thought requesting a trade home to Toronto would help him deal with grief. It only made it more difficult.

He now says he probably shouldn't have been playing in the NHL last season, and the future of his career now lies in the hands of a coach with whom his relationship has never been smooth.

"I always tell people, in pro sports a player and a coach don't have to be best friends to have success as a team and as an individual," O'Neill said. "He knows that I need to be motivated in a different way than other players. We have that understanding. If I go through a couple game stretch where he's on me to play better, it's not like you want to go in there and share a nice pop with him the next morning. It's simple as that."

Because of that, in one specific way, Maurice's job hasn't changed at all. His success may depend on his ability to wring the most out of O'Neill, whose considerable talent hasn't always translated into production.

O'Neill scored 41 goals in 2000-01 -- a mark that only becomes more impressive with time, given the offense-unfriendly conditions of the pre-lockout NHL -- and at least 30 in each of the next two seasons but only 42 in the three seasons since.

"I think last year I probably shouldn't even have played hockey," O'Neill said. "I couldn't get my emotions in the right place and find the right mind-set. It's tough enough to play in this league when everything's fine. But when you're worrying about your family and dealing with grief like that, it's difficult to get your mind on the task at hand.

"I didn't do it very well and I'm disappointed in that fact. I'm sure my brother would have been disappointed in me, too. I'm trying to come back this year and play well and get back to the player I know I can be."

O'Neill and Battaglia came to despise Maurice at times in Carolina, wilting under the harsh criticism Maurice felt essential to bringing out the best in both. But he was the only NHL coach either ever knew, an easy target for their frustration.

Now he is their hockey salvation.

"It's so much easier to deal with both of them now," Maurice said. "They're not kids anymore. They've played for other people, and I'm not the ogre Bates once thought I was. I'm not Darth Vader. And he works his [butt] off. I don't have to tell Bates to work hard anymore because he does."