Why Paul Maurice says the Florida Panthers are ‘the best team I've ever coached'

Miami Herald

3 days ago

Paul Maurice has been around the NHL for quite a bit. His 1,930 regular-season games coached are the second-most in NHL history. His 27 seasons behind the bench are tied for second-most. He has a chance to become the 20th coach in league history to win multiple Stanley Cups as he leads the Florida Panthers back to the Stanley Cup Final this season against the Edmonton Oilers.
He has had multiple stops during his career — first the Hartford Whalers/Carolina Hurricanes, then the Toronto Maple Leafs, then back to Carolina and then the Winnipeg Jets before joining the Panthers ahead of the 2022-23 season that began a run of three consecutive trips to the Stanley Cup Final.
But there has been something about coaching this team, at this stage in his career, that had Maurice make a bold statement Saturday.
'I'm really careful and I'm not being disrespectful to the other teams I've coached, but the team here is just the best team I've ever coached,' Maurice said. 'It's not really that close.'
Now, Maurice made sure to clarify that he's been 'lucky' that 'every team that I coached, they are a great bunch of guys' and that there is 'a great culture in our sport' overall.
So what it is about this Panthers team that's different, that sets it above the rest? Maurice, a man who knows how to turn a phrase, still can't fully put it into words.
'My experience, from the time I started getting off the phone [for introductions after being hired] was 'This team is different and I can't explain it,'' Maurice said. 'Now, I'm three years in, and I'm starting to understand it a little bit. I do not feel responsible for it. I don't. It's been fun to observe. But that's why I don't talk about it because I don't think it's comparative. 'Oh, these guys are just a way better bunch of guys than I had before.' It's not that. These guys are different.'
To Maurice, that starts with the veteran leadership in the room — the Aleksander Barkovs, Aaron Ekblads and Matthew Tkachuks — that not only set the standard for the team to follow but were willing to change their own ways to get the team to this point.
Remember, Florida won the Presidents' Trophy as the NHL's top regular-season team in 2021-22 before getting swept by the Tampa Bay Lightning in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs that year. That prompted general manager Bill Zito to make a change, bringing in Maurice to implement a defense-first system to overtake the high-flying offensive attack Florida had that worked in the regular season but fell flat in the postseason.
The Panthers struggled out of the gate that first year and needing a strong finish in the regular season to sneak into the playoffs.
But Florida has seen the move pay dividends, getting to the Stanley Cup Final in Year 1, winning the Cup in Year 2 and now being in a position to potentially win it again this year.
'It's so rare that you'll have a new coach come in after a Presidents' Trophy,' Maurice said. 'Now, you have coaches come in partway through the season because that team is underachieving their greatness and then they make a coaching change. You see that happen, but you rarely will see this. I got gifted a 122-point team and just shaved 30 points off of it in that first year with my high quality of coaching. So the drivers, the leaders, the core of this team are elite players. We've got a good team here. I'm just trying not to mess it up.'
Safe to say that hasn't happened.