DeBoer Hopes to Build on Past Playoff Experience

During his eight seasons coaching in the NHL with the Florida Panthers, New Jersey Devils and San Jose Sharks, Peter DeBoer has experienced what a rollercoaster ride it can be.

He’s been through some of the highest highs and lowest lows and seen how quickly you can bounce from one to the other.

What could be lower than being fired by the Devils on the day after Christmas in 2014? Yet 17 months later that feels like a memory from a former life to DeBoer as he prepares the Sharks to take on the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Stanley Cup Final, which begins at Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh on Monday (8 p.m. ET; NBC, CBC, TVA Sports).

“It does feel like a long time ago,” DeBoer said Friday. “In this business you tell players all the time, and we have to take it too, you have to have a short memory. You’ve got to have a short memory and take every situation for the experience it was. Even at the time, and still to this day, I wouldn’t trade my New Jersey experiences for anything.”

Those experiences will come in handy for DeBoer during the next couple of weeks. He was in this position with the Devils in 2012, having guided them to the Cup Final in his first season with a team that had missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs the previous season.

In his first season with the Sharks he’s taken a group with a reputation for underachieving in the postseason to the organization’s first Cup Final a year after they appeared to hit rock bottom by failing to qualify for the playoffs for the first time in 11 seasons.

“Real similar situations,” said DeBoer, who is the 11th NHL coach to bring two teams to a Cup Final. “Two teams that missed the year before and their coaches either were fired or moved on but there was a good foundation in place and just needed a little bit of a reset.”

The difference for DeBoer this time is he knows what it’s like to coach in a Cup Final and how to deal with the added attention, expectations and …

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