Back in the early 1990s, the coaches and general managers of the major junior teams in Ontario would get together and make the next season’s schedule. It was an arduous process and often the younger GMs in the group would get the short end of the stick when it came to travel.

And so it was that a young Paul Maurice, the coach and GM of the Detroit Junior Red Wings, and his equally young assistant coach Pete DeBoer ended up with a five or six-game road trip that wound from Windsor to the Toronto area and then to northern Ontario for stops in Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie. All with very little rest between games.

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