Paul Maurice, head coach of the Florida Panthers
Paul Maurice, head coach of the Florida Panthers

Ahead of Game 1, Panthers head coach Paul Maurice discussed the changes in the Maple Leafs’ game under Craig Berube, the importance of home-ice advantage, Mitch Marner welcoming a new baby at the start of the series, and his experience with Anthony Stolarz in Florida last season. 

Morning Skate Lines – Game 1

What is different about the Craig Berube-coached Leafs compared to the Toronto teams you’ve faced in the past?

Maurice: Personnel would be one thing. It is quite a bit of a different-looking team. There are different names on the backend.

I think there is more patience in their game. Maybe in the past, there was an attack mindset offensively all the time. Now, they are more patient. They’ll put pucks deep. They’ll be more patient with the pucks out. It is a bit more of a mature game.

How much do you feel home ice matters in today’s NHL compared to the past?

Maurice: I don’t feel it is as important as it used to be. Some of it goes to the change and the structure of teams. All of the rule changes in ’06 allowed younger, faster, more skilled players to come in and be more impactful early, which means you didn’t have the room for the checking line.

There are still a couple of teams that run a checking line with really strong home records — Carolina with Staal, and Winnipeg with Lowry — but there is less of that delineation between the lines.

At home, if you have a hard checking line, you have a huge advantage. There is a difference in some series. That is still there, but there is just not as much in the rest of the teams. There is a lot of depth from 1-4. Sure, each team has a matchup they want, but coaches don’t fight as hard for the matchup because there just isn’t as big of a difference between the lines.

The changes in the rules allowed young players to come in. There is more skill in our game. It pushed out a little bit of the grinding, pure checking third or fourth line idea. The home ice was kind of lost with that.

There are three former Panthers you know pretty well in the Leafs‘ room. They were talking about sharing secrets with their current teammates about your team. Is there such a thing as secrets? Is that something you worry about?

Maurice: There are no Cinderella stories in the eight teams remaining. They are all really, really good teams. The one thing they all share is consistency.

You can watch. If you pick one of our games in the last series, and you pick one of Toronto’s games, you know what they do. There is no aberration. The good teams do the exact same thing over and over again. In the end, probably the team that wins is the most consistent team.

Everyone has their own culture and glossary that they use, but at the end of the day, between analytics, the video we get, and the software that we have to break it down, there are just no secrets. The most consistent team is the easiest team to pre-scout, but that team usually wins, so knowing what they do doesn’t help anybody.

Mitch Marner just had a baby. Oliver Ekman-Larsson had a baby just before the playoffs last year… 

Maurice: There are a lot of babies happening. I think the teams are of a similar age. We have a gaggle. We have our own daycare going on at the rink. It is awesome.

What sort of impact does it have? OEL was saying it helped him in the playoffs. Do you expect Marner to have a little extra energy?

Maurice: It is not on the pre-scout board. “Hey, you have to watch the new Dads!” But we have had a whole bunch this year, and there is certainly a lightness when they come to the rink. The perspective does change, for sure. It changes everything in such a positive way.

I remember Darren Langdon had triplets one year. He already had about an 18-month-old at home. He would come in and sleep. He started coming to the rink earlier, and he’d sleep in the lounge. The guys would keep the lights off. There was no music in the mornings. It was the only time Langer had a chance to sleep.

They are all going through it at the same time. It is wonderful. With these great players, you hope they all stay in your community when they’re done. Their kids are a part of it. For non-traditional markets, it is also where the hockey program grows. Hockey players have kids who play hockey, and they are usually pretty good. They have a good stock. That is how those hockey programs take off.

It’s a wonderful thing.

Anthony Stolarz has been a rock for this Toronto team the entire season. He is getting the biggest opportunity of his career. What did you learn from him in your time together?

Maurice: The personality is the first part. I will qualify that I don’t know anything about goaltending — like, nothing. I am serious — especially the “why” you would play goal.

For us, at home against the Islanders last year, we gave up 41 shots. Clearly, we were in Stanley Cup form. He was fantastic. He looked different than he did at the start of the year. He looked the way he does now.

From January on last year, he was exactly the guy who has played for the Leafs. He is one of the wonderful personalities of the game that you cheer for. Clearly, we hope we can find a way to get a few by him, but good for him.

He did it right by his teammates. He was a great pair with Sergei (Bobrovsky). He is a great personality and a team-first guy. You love seeing those guys have success.

Your team has played a lot of hockey over the last three years. How big do you think or hope it will be that you defeated Tampa in just five games? You don’t want to go seven every round, obviously.

Maurice: I felt the end of our season was egregious. If you go to the third week of March onward, we played 10 or 14 on the road. We had five sets of back-to-backs. We finished with nine games in 15 days.

We had about four or five guys who were kind of wobbly with day-to-day stuff. We started pulling guys out of the lineup. I wasn’t resting them, other than Sam Reinhart, who was on pace to play 86 this year with the four at Four Nations, plus the 82. We pulled him out of a couple of back-to-backs.

I thought I saw it a little bit in Game 2, and then we came out of it. Now, for our team, this is our sixth game in 19 days. We had come out of nine games in 15 days. I don’t feel that is an issue for this group at all anymore.

We play in so many tight games. That is almost the history from January 1st on — really tight games, and that is the style of game that we play. You don’t have to feel well to play well or win. You don’t need your hands, and you don’t have to feel good.

When Aaron Ekblad is out, how much has the comfort with your second defense pairing, Niko Mikkola and Dmitry Kulikov, helped the team, and what have you liked about the duo over the last couple of years?

Maurice: It is the advantage found in the adversity. It goes back a couple of years for us. We had Montour and Ekblad undergo surgeries last year to start the season. We had to find different pairs. It wasn’t for a game or two; it was for long stretches of time when we had different pairings.

Kulikov and Mikkola have been very good together. It is a legitimate pair. On its own, it is not a default pair for us, but both of them play a hard game. Niko gets across the ice and is a hitter, and so is Kuli. They understand each other’s games. We are fortunate with that.

Balinskis and Schmidt have played together quite a bit this year. They played together in the playoffs. There is nothing new for our backend with a player like Aaron out.

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