After Tuesday’s practice, Panthers head coach Paul Maurice discussed his team’s defensive improvement in its 2-0 win over the Leafs in Game 4 and the intensity of the series ramping up heading into Game 5.
Is there an update on Evan Rodrigues’ status?
Maurice: Nothing yet. It was just a step-up program. He will skate tomorrow morning. That is when we will make the decision. He hasn’t been ruled out, but he hasn’t been cleared.
With the series now tied, how much do you encourage the team to embrace the moment now ahead of Game 5?
Maurice: I think this is true of both teams. 82 games are a grinder for them. In each series, as you hit the Game 5 mark, two of the three are an elimination game. The intensity amps up, not just because of the urgency of the moment, but the understanding is that for one of two really, really good teams, there are only two or three games left in your season. It ends in Game 6 or 7. There is nothing to save it for. You see the energy ramp up.
How do you replicate the team’s defensive effort in Game 4?
Maurice: It is not a place we aspire to and hope we can get there. We would actually think that is our base foundation. Our adjustments are usually toward that game.
The first seven or seven-and-a-half games of our playoff life this year have been against very dynamic teams in that kind of rush-from-one-end-to-the-other game. We are still learning to adapt that to a hard-gap game. It is the most difficult game to hard-gap, the kind of game the two teams we’ve played have played. I am hoping the adaptation process is continuing and going, and we are starting to get a hang of when we can press and when we can pull off.
The gap is such a critical part of what we do. It is all we talked about for three years. I don’t spend a lot of time talking about our offensive play.
I think we have been good at times. Game 4 would’ve been our best in terms of the consistency through the three periods of looking the way we hope to, but the other team gets paid, too. They have a lot to do with not being able to set that gap.
What makes it so difficult to get to that type of game?
Maurice: I think you saw it in Game 3. There was a piece of it that came through in Game 3 after the first period. I joked about it, but getting through the first 35 seconds without giving up a goal has a pretty strong impact on how you feel the game is going.
Confidence is built or lost in each game. You are constantly trying to feel good about yourself and your game, and that is a tough way to start those two games. We were a little behind it. I don’t even know if we came out wrong in Game 1, but you looked up, and we were down 2-0.
Both teams, because the series is so tight, want that positive feeling in the first 10 minutes. Both of you can then have a better chance of implementing your game if your confidence is there and your quickness is there.
Sam Bennett scored the big goal in Game 4. He is averaging around a point per game in the playoffs. How have you seen the skill side of his game develop over the last couple of years?
Maurice: Sam is one of those guys. He has had a couple of big hits over the last few years, and it is in the playoffs, so it is a version of the coming-out party. You get two months of playoff hockey, and then, in back-to-back years, people will start to notice that.
We haven’t seen it as much lately, but he has a great ability to score off the rush through people. He has a really quick release that he can get off. His probably quite a bit faster than we would know. In part, we have almost needed him to slow the game down in certain parts of the ice so we could catch up to him. He has great speed. He is a powerful, fast skater. He has some small-area hands.
What he has going on is similar to what Carter Verhaeghe has. The game has to get to a certain speed level for it to come out or have the opportunity to show it. In the playoffs, those two guys play together at such a high rate of speed. They almost create the environment for each other.
16 of your players have a point already in the series. How happy have you been with the top-to-bottom depth contributions?
Maurice: I think that is what has been going on in this series. It would be true, in some ways, of their team as well. We have some pretty good defensive structure, so that means, for the most part, that everyone is playing against their own pay grade. There is not really a difference in style between our top line and our fourth line. I would say that is true of Toronto as well.
It is not necessarily a shooter who is going to win you the game or the guy who you would normally predict to score. It will just be a battle through four lines.
You have talked about Brad Marchand bringing so much to Anton Lundell’s line. Everyone assumed Marchand would play with Sam Bennett and Matthew Tkachuk. But did it seem like a natural fit for you on the current third line?
Maurice: Yeah. This is not a media idea, but the social idea from the people on the outside would say, “Oh my God, what would that [Marchand-Bennett-Tkachuk] line look like!?”
At the start, neither one of those guys was in our lineup. When Matthew came back at the start of the Tampa series, he wasn’t where he is now. He had a ways to go. I wouldn’t have put those guys together.
Once Brad had gotten on the ice and gotten healthy, you started to see that there is something he does that those other two young players could benefit from. It came together pretty quickly, that idea.
You are on record as saying chirping is a lost art. Is Marchand a throwback? You must sit there some days and chuckle.
Maurice: It is still not as much fun because there is not as much stuff coming back anymore. It is a kinder, gentler world that we live in.
I just like his enthusiasm for the game. The older players have such a different perspective. They just love coming to the rink for practice. They love all parts of the game because it is not like it is going to last forever for them. There will be a time when there is not a locker room to walk into and chirp so easily.
They appreciate it, and you can feel that appreciation from him.
How important is it to have a veteran like Marchand around the young players on the club, seeing him out on an optional skate day?
Maurice: Really important. It has to be consistent. You can’t have just one guy as that player.
We do have a whole bunch of great role models here — the Barkov effect, Forsling, and all of these guys who train so very hard but are in some ways quiet men. They are so consistent, and they would certainly lead by example, but Marchy has such an extroverted personality that you just want to be around him on an off-day, too, because he has fun.
There is a lot of pressure, but at the end of the day, no one is going to war. No one is carrying a gun to work. But you want something so bad, and with the pressure, you need someone in there who looks like they are having fun with it. We can’t all be uptight.
You need someone who plays really hard. It is not a casualness — because that is dangerous — but it is very intense and very happy at the same time. That might be the two pieces to his personality that make him so valuable.
