One Stanley Cup ring hasn't changed Maurice, who is on the verge of another

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Paul Maurice is not the same person or coach he was when he got his first job in the NHL at 28 years old in the mid-1990s with the Hartford Whalers. He followed that organization to Carolina, went to Toronto, returned to Carolina and spent nearly a decade in Winnipeg.

The culmination of those three decades came last year when he coached the Florida Panthers to the Stanley Cup. One win from becoming just the 18th coach in NHL history to win it back to back, Maurice is the same guy his players have gotten to know and follow since he arrived in the summer of 2022.

“I don’t think he’s changed since winning,” playoff leading goal-scorer Sam Bennett said. "He’s the same. He can be hard on us. He’s hard on us when he needs to be, and then he’s relaxed with us when he knows that we need to, so I think he really does have a good feel for what our team needs. We all have the utmost respect for him.”

Maurice, now 58, thought that was a nice thing to say. But what has allowed him to earn that respect from within the locker room?

Unsurprisingly, his words.

“If you walk into the room and you just tell the truth, whether they want to hear it or not but it’s the truth, and over time you could look back and say, ‘What that person told me was the truth,’ you’ll have respect for that,” Maurice said. "So, I work hard at trying to find the truth every day and then just telling it as simply as I can with the occasional joke slipped in. Most times I’m the only one that thinks it’s funny.”

It's a different kind of funny that Maurice almost stopped coaching after stepping away from the Jets in 2022. General manager Bill Zito called, Maurice took the job and the rest is Florida hockey history.

The Panthers are on the verge of winning 11 of 12 series since Maurice took over. Not once was he close to the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year, but that's a regular-season trophy, and he has done nothing but win in the playoffs.

“He really has control of this team,” Bennett said. “The team’s really just bought into the culture that he’s implemented into this team, and we’re all willing to do whatever it takes and play that hard style that he keeps preaching to us night in and night out and we’ve all just bought into that over the years.”

A.J. Greer, one of several additions who weren't part of the 2024 run, said Maurice is a unique combination of a motivator who is also analytical and technical.

“He’s kind of just a complete package of being able to motivate us and elevate our games mentally,” Greer said. “He’s also a guy that can really translate prior games into a meeting and point out what we need to be better at. He sees the game incredibly well."

Zito credits Maurice and his staff, along with ownership and the lifestyle in South Florida, for making the Panthers an attractive destination for free agents and players with no-trade clauses who can choose where to go.

There is good reason for that beyond Maurice's affable personality. From Bennett to Niko Mikkola, Nate Schmidt and many, many others, players who were either adrift in their careers or looking to get on track have thrived playing for him.

“They give you a blue print of how he wants you to play, and he molds that around your strengths as a player and he doesn’t ask you to do more than what you should be doing,” said Schmidt, who got a glimpse into Maurice playing one season for him in Winnipeg. "It’s not the easiest system just to jump into, but he expects a certain level out of each guy and if you give that to him, there’s no problem. And that’s something that I find it was freeing for me, and once you kind of settle into how he wants you to play and into what kind of role he wants you to be in, it takes a lot of the pressure off.”

The past several months has been about the pressure of defending a title, but Maurice has enjoyed this run more, acknowledging “you’re allowed to enjoy it a little bit more” with your name already etched in hockey's hallowed trophy.

Tuesday night is set to be Maurice's 2,091st game as a head coach in the NHL, more than anyone except nine-time Stanley Cup-winner Scotty Bowman. He has some time to catch up to that record, but Maurice has not been at a loss for words going for his second as his popularity among players grows.

“I think you guys know, too: He’s got a lot of things to say," center Anton Lundell said. "But it’s fun to be here, and as a group we like him.”

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AP NHL playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl