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Head coach Jon Cooper of the Tampa Bay Lightning and head coach Paul Maurice of the Florida Panthers shake hands after Game Five of the First Round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs (Photo by Mike Carlson/Getty Images)

History of NHL Coaches in the Playoff Handshake Line & Why They Belong

Originally posted on The Hockey Writers
By Jeremy Schouppe | Last updated May 7, 2025 8:35 AM ET

The handshake line is a time-honored NHL tradition at the end of a Stanley Cup Playoff series. The NHL is the only professional sports league in North America where players make a formal line following the series and shake hands with every player on the opposing team.

The tradition has mostly been for the players because, as head coach of the Florida Panthers, Paul Maurice put it, “The battle is real. The intensity is real, the meanness. You have two guys crossing paths who had been trying to do harm to each other for somewhere between four and seven games. That handshake is legitimate, and it’s real. And that’s a part of the great story of our game that they can do that.”

Maurice said this after he admitted that he is not a massive fan of coaches being involved in the handshake line. He believes the spotlight should remain on the players, adding, “They’re the guys who win, lose, suffer, go through the pain, fight for their teammates, take hits, do the real work”.

In 2021, when Maurice was the head coach of the Winnipeg Jets, he skipped the handshake line following a Game 7 loss to the Montreal Canadiens. He was criticized for it, but shared a similar sentiment that the spotlight should remain on the players. Some think it was unsportsmanlike; however, he skipped the handshake line after the Jets swept the Edmonton Oilers in Round 1 of those same playoffs.

Talking to the media before the Panthers’ second-round series against the Toronto Maple Leafs, Maurice said, “When this whole thing started, and I don’t know when it changed, probably in the past 10 years, but the coaches would come off the bench, shake hands, and then they would leave.” He doesn’t know precisely when it became a tradition for coaches to join the handshake line, but it’s become increasingly common. “Now, if you don’t, you get roasted for it, being disrespectful. So, you’ve got to go and shake a bunch of sweaty dudes’ hands.”

When Did NHL Coaches Join the Handshake Line?

Maurice has been a head coach in the NHL since 1995-96 and is second all-time in games coached, just over 200 games behind Scotty Bowman, who holds the record. “When I first started, the coaches never shook the players’ hands,” Maurice noted following the series against the Canadiens. And we have to believe him; he is the most experienced behind the bench right now.

While it is hard to pin down the first coach to join their players at the end of the handshake line, it is more common today than in the past. With limited publicly posted videos from past broadcasts, the earliest sighting of a coach on the ice for the handshake line was in the 1991 Playoffs, when the Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Minnesota Wild to win the Stanley Cup in a six-game series. The Penguins’ coaching staff went through the line after joining their team in the celebration following the final buzzer.

The handshake line can be traced back to 1908, so it’s more than likely that other coaches joined the line before then. However, these are the only coaches I found going through the handshake line after a Stanley Cup Playoff series between 1987 and 1994. I also noticed that between 1987 and 1998, it seemed only the winning team’s coaches went through the formal handshake line, if any coach went through at all, presumably because they were already on the ice celebrating the victory and that no coaches were seen in the handshake lines following the Cup Final victory from 1987 to 1990.

With better league footage for the 2007 Playoffs, only three of 16 coaches were seen shaking hands following their first-round series. In the 2024 Playoffs, all 16 coaches shook everyone’s hand following their first-round series, and it was the same after the first round this year.

Coaches have become more involved in this tradition over the past 15 years, which has turned it into an obligation. While Maurice has downplayed his role as bench boss, saying, “We just drink coffee and swear,” the coaches deserve to celebrate or reflect on a hard-fought battle with their ‘hockey family’.

Why NHL Coaches Should Join the Line

We cannot downplay the effect a coach has on their team. With numerous first-round demons, the Toronto Maple Leafs looked calm and collected in their first-round series against the Ottawa Senators with a new voice behind the bench. Craig Berube also took Nick Robertson out of the lineup after Game 2 against the Senators. He inserted Max Pacioretty, who ultimately scored the Maple Leafs’ game-winning goal to clinch their first-round victory in Game 6.

In Game 7 of the Winnipeg Jets vs. St. Louis Blues Round 1 series, Jets head coach Scott Arniel blended his forward lines after his team went down two goals early. In that game, he used nine different line combinations (via Natural Stat Trick), which sparked a multi-goal comeback that ended in a double-overtime victory.

Yes, coaches are not going through the physical battle the players are, but like in combat, warriors need their leaders to put them in a position to succeed. The mental warfare coaches go through in a playoff series is not talked about enough, and coaches do not get enough credit in many cases.

Maurice can downplay his role and might feel out of place in the handshake line, but he and all other coaches should embrace it. Yes, the players on the ice decide the game, but coaches are very much part of the battle. They have an incredibly challenging job and deserve to be in that handshake line for the leadership and mental strength it takes to lead an NHL team.

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