RALEIGH — Some coaches profess to be good friends with each other. Then there are the Canes' Paul Maurice and Florida's Peter DeBoer, whose teams face off tonight.
"We played our junior hockey together," Maurice said today. "We lived together. We married friends. We stood in each other's wedding party. He ended up living in the same town as my older brother and coached my brother's kids."
Other than that ...
Maurice smiled as he completed the sentence, saying, "... I've never met the man."
"No, we'd be in that group of three or four people you'd call the best of friends. And I hope we beat their (butts) ...
"Because I cannot possibly imagine what the summer would be like playing golf with him if we do not win the season series. I don't think you guys realize what my life is going to be like if we don't beat these guys. It would just be awful, savage."
Maurice, in a more serious vein, hopes there will be a carryover of confidence from the Canes' 3-2 win over Montreal on Tuesday.
"I'll let you know when that puck drops," he said. "That's the beauty of this league. You get to feel good for about 48 hours and the puck drops and you have to do it all over. Or if you feel bad, you get a chance to go out and play hard.
"But I'm hoping what it did is that there will be points that your power play looks as ours did early on, but you can still win the game on its back even if it's not pretty. So hopefully we took a little confidence from that."
The Canes had 11 power plays against the Canadiens, scoring all three goals. They also allowed a shorthanded goal.
A Raleigh native, Chip has worked at the N&O since 1979 and is the Canes beat writer. He can be reached at 
