He's a guy that can get a lot out of the right kind of roster. His first stint with Carolina they played a heavy game without any real star power outside of Ronnie Franchise and O'Neill. Those teams were a hell of a lot more difficult to knock out of the playoffs than they had any right to be, taking strong Boston and New Jersey teams to 6 games in back to back years before breaking through in 02 and getting all the way to the SCF with a payroll that looks like something the Billy Beane A's were rolling out compared to their opponents that entire run.
Roster was decimated by injuries the season after the 02 final (they started off the season pretty solidly in the East playoff picture) and the team fell apart. Canes started to do a bit of a rebuild and moved more in a finesse direction, and he just wasn't a fit for what they were rolling out by the start of the 03-04 season, so they replaced him with Laviolette.
Mo then came back after Lavi lost the room and took a team that had no business even making the playoffs in 09 to the Conference Final because everyone was buying in.
Toronto not a good fit for those rosters, and those teams weren't that good.
Winnipeg's roster was a work in progress as well, so it took a few years to see any results. 1 Conference Finals run but by the Covid seasons it looked like the team had tuned him out.