DETROIT -- When teams talk about development and commitment to personnel over the long haul, they're nearly always referring to players.

	Paul Maurice is currently the longest tenured coach with the same team in the NHL.

When center Joe Thornton was drafted No. 1 overall in 1997, the Boston Bruins promised to bring the youngster along slowly and with great care. A year later, the Tampa Bay Lightning vowed the same thing with Vincent Lecavalier. The philosophy in those two cases was that eventually they would blossom if the weight of the world wasn't placed on their shoulders too soon into the process.

In the "win-right-now-or-be-fired" mantra so widely embraced in professional sports, a player gets a few years (often the life of his three-year contract) to demonstrate his value to a franchise. If management deems it hasn't worked, he's shipped off to the next destination.

In the case of coaches, organizations are far less patient. The average shelf life of bench bosses in all sports is short and when changes are made, the things that went wrong can be attributed to many factors other than who was behind the bench but it is coaches who pay the price.

The New Jersey Devils, who won the Stanley Cup as recently as 2000, have been a revolving door of coaches. With eight games remaining in the regular season of 1999-2000, they elected to fire coach Robbie Ftorek and replace him with Larry Robinson. He was replaced by Kevin Constantine and on Thursday, Constantine was replaced by Pat Burns. That's four coaches in a span of 27 months.

The Carolina Hurricanes, runners-up in this year's Stanley Cup finals, took the absolute opposite approach. On Nov. 6, 1995, the then-Hartford Whalers handed the head coaching job to 28-year-old Paul Maurice.

General manager Jim Rutherford had known Maurice since he as a teenager and had watched him grow from his playing days to a coach in his tenure with the Compuware hockey program that led to Maurice's job coaching the Detroit Junior Red Wings.

Rutherford saw something special in Maurice early on and believed he would grow into the NHL job.

At the time he was hired, Maurice wasn't a known quantity except to his bosses and they were committed to a long-term solution rather than a quick fix for the franchise. That patience by Rutherford, which wore thin in December when the team was underachieving, paid significant dividends this season.

Carolina captain Ron Francis, who is four years older than Maurice, said he was thrilled that the coach was finally getting the recognition he deserves. In the last few years, because of the low profile the team enjoys, the only time Maurice's name came up was in rumors he was going to be fired.

"It's about time he starts taking a little credit for our success," said Francis. "I think he'd be the first one to tell you that when he got the job, he was extremely young and maybe not real sure of himself. I can only speak for the four years I've worked with him. I think every year he's gotten better and better.

"It's unfortunate that every season at some point, he's rumored to be fired and this year was no different in December. But I thought it was a good sign for our hockey club when that game came about that our guys responded and played extremely well. I think it said a lot about how we feel about him and I think it gave him a lot more confidence to know the team certainly respected him and his abilities."

Though he has labored in unknown markets (first Hartford and then Raleigh), Maurice is highly regarded in hockey circles as a shrewd tactician who gets the most out of his team. He's also articulate with a sharp self-deprecating wit and listens a great deal to his players.

Rutherford has backed his coach and believed it would pay off in the long haul. With Scotty Bowman retiring from coach after his ninth Stanley Cup, Maurice is currently the longest tenured coach with the same team in the NHL.

"My first three years of coaching Hartford, I don't think people understood when I got the job except, 'What are they doing?' " said Maurice. "I was not evaluated the same. That takes a lot of courage for your GM not to point the finger at the coach.

	“	I really believe in the direction that this team has taken for quite some time, not just this year. I believe we're moving in the proper direction. ”
		— Paul Maurice, Hurricanes coach

"We've also never had a disatrous season. We were always in the playoff hunt and we were always getting a little bit better. The last four years, we've had winning seasons. Certainly, they don't call for a parade. We were only a handful of games over .500 the first three. But this year and maybe last year, I think I've been evaluated in the same manner other coaches have been. We made the playoffs last year and put up a pretty good fight against a good team. We've had a pretty good season this year."

It was better than pretty good. He had taken the franchise farther than it had ever gone before but that didn't mean it didn't hurt when it was over.

When the Hurricanes were eliminated in the finals on Thursday night by the Red Wings, Maurice walked slowly into the media conference area. Aside from a little flush high up in his cheeks, the rest of his face was almost ashen. He looked drained, spent from a grueling season, devastated by the empty feeling that comes with losing a prize you really believed you could win.

Maurice said it would be a long time before he could step back, emotionally, and appreciate how far the franchise has come, how far his young players have come and how far he has come.

"I think the longer you feel it, the more you thought it could happen, the more you believed it would," he said of the psychic hangover caused by coming up short.

He believes in their future but he said unlike some others, he always has.

"I really believe in the direction that this team has taken for quite some time, not just this year," he said. "I believe we're moving in the proper direction."

And Maurice will continue to guide it. Because of the decision Rutherford and owner Peter Karmanos to stick with their young coach through thick and thin, Maurice has been able to hone his skills, make his mistakes, learn from them and improve. The benefits are his wisdom beyond his years, respect from his players and his peers and the validation that sometimes the long view really is the best one.

And the Carolina Hurricanes, opting for the road almost never taken in pro sports, are all the richer for it.

Nancy Marrapese-Burrell of the Boston Globe is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.