After his team’s 3-2 loss to the Maple Leafs, Panthers head coach Paul Maurice discussed his team’s performance and the status of the injured Aleksander Barkov.
On his team’s performance:
I didn’t like the first six minutes of the third period. I just didn’t think we skated, and then we got hemmed in a little bit.
The overview is that I expected the whole game to look like that. I thought that was the way the game was going to be played, so I loved the first 40 and the last 12 or 10 minutes of the third period. I liked our game an awful lot.
We are having a hard time hitting the net, and we had a bunch blocked. We probably had close to 50 that never got to the net. We had some good looks. We’ll leave it here.
On whether the Panthers’ inability to break through enough offensively was frustrating:
It is frustrating when you are playing poorly and doing a bunch of strange things. That will drive you insane.
Our game was right tonight. For context, our game was right.
On the Panthers’ really strong second period, despite the injury absences and tired situation:
There are a whole bunch of things we did right that are kind of systemic to what we are trying to do.
That is the really good challenge we are in right now. It is a lot like January for us. We played a lot of really strong hockey and didn’t get the results.
It is good for us. In our last 44 games, we had 10 sets of games where we were on the front or back half of a back-to-back. 20 of our 44 games were played like that. We are feeling it a little bit, and that is a good thing. It is a good thing to go through.
On Aleksander Barkov’s status:
Upper body, day-to-day. He will play as soon as he is healthy, but I don’t think it is a long-term deal.
On Sergei Bobrovsky hitting game #750:
He is a new experience for me. He is an incredibly interesting, interesting man off the ice. He is just a wonderful person to talk to. I still consider him a young guy, but boy, you can learn a lot from conversations with him about his prep and how much he cares.
He seems to have found a way to have a little bit of fun with all of the pressure a #1 goalie carries. It has been a pleasure:
On Brad Marchand moving around the lineup to start his Panther career:
I feel exactly the same about where he is at as I did with Vladimir Tarasenko last year. When he came in for those six weeks, I played him with everybody.
We have some moving parts right now with players out of our lineup, so that continues until we hopefully get to the playoffs. We just make a decision and go.
I am trying to play him with as many people as I can.
He can play both sides and up and down. He can kill penalties and help you on the power play. I am really excited about a unit with maybe him, Bennett, and Verhaeghe on it. There are some things that we are not going to get to try until everybody comes back, if everybody comes back. We will be patient with it.
On the Panthers facing another back-to-back this weekend:
We have a routine for all of these. We are getting pretty good at it, I think. We will fly tomorrow, get a little skate in, and go and do it again.
