On a travel day on Thursday, Panthers head coach Paul Maurice discussed his team’s balanced scoring, the blowout win over the Leafs Game 5, and his club’s approach to close-out opportunities in recent playoff runs.
What have you learned about your team’s approach to close-out games?
Maurice: The first lesson was against Toronto two years ago. We had a 3-0 series lead. We went home and wanted it so bad that we tried to make it happen every time we touched the puck. We were just throwing hope plays. It takes a bit of patience in the game.
If you learn something, you usually don’t forget it, right? If you learn how to tie your shoes, two years later, you won’t forget. We thought we learned it two years ago, and then we forgot it for three straight games in the final last year. It is nothing you get to keep. It is something you have to live through, and maybe you recall pieces of it.
How have you seen the team’s offensive game grow over the series?
Maurice: I don’t know how far off we were in Game 1 because we got behind it so quickly. Even in Game 2, depending on what sources you use, and we have our own, the analytics were better than the final score said. Of the last four games that we have played, at even strength, last night was our smallest margin for offense. The final score doesn’t tell you how the game is played, for the most part.
With such spread-out scoring among your players (17 with a point), what does it do for the overall group when so many players are feeling good about recently contributing?
Maurice: I am thinking that we have 26 guys here, so that makes nine guys who are getting chirped pretty hard every day, and the goalies.
Playoff goals feel good, especially, but at any time, the goal is what makes you feel good. When you have a guy who is not scoring, it is always the same line of thinking. “I don’t have confidence.” As a coach, you go, “How do I give a guy confidence? Score harder!” How do you do that?
The fact that you can spread it around — and they are all carrying into a game a reasonable belief that they can score, because they have in the last 10 games — means they feel good about where they are at.
You can’t do much for a guy when he doesn’t have that positive feeling. “You’re getting your chances. Hang in there.” Having a number of guys coming to the rink feeling good about their game is really important.
In the past, you have said that AJ Greer is built for the playoffs. What has he shown you in the last three games?
Maurice: It would start with day two of training camp, actually. Day one hurt him. On day two, I have never seen a guy work that hard to push himself through a painful experience. Really shocking. I never forgot that. It is why we kept him in the lineup for every game, minus injury, this year. He just earned it.
He is big and fast. When he plays a direct and simple game, that is what playoffs are. He will get there if he can. He will get to the net if he can. He will do all of the hard things if it is there for him to do. He has trained himself to do that.
Some guys can get themselves to a different emotional level in the playoffs, and then there are guys who just train themselves all year to play a certain style of game, and it just happens to be the game that is played in the playoffs.
When you juggled the fourth line at the start of the series, what were you looking for, and what did you find with the current fourth line?
Maurice: It wasn’t a hope. What happened there was actually the last six weeks of the regular season. At the trade deadline, you bring people in, and the challenge with it is finding the right places for those guys to play. You also have guys who have been here all year who aren’t in the lineup.
The things that I complained about in the last six weeks have turned out to be a great thing for us. I complained about our schedule because it was egregious, to say the least. But that line played together, and they were great. They were consistently really, really good in the regular season.
I was looking for a style change in the way that we were playing the game. I had that memory of that line. It is all of those guys.
We either played teams who were fighting for their lives, teams who were completely out of it, or a few teams who had already made it. Those guys played the exact same way in all three situations. They didn’t take a team lightly. They didn’t have risk in their game where they cost us a game against one of those teams fighting for their lives. They were really, really consistent.
When they went into [Game 3], I think they had a really good idea of what they were doing together. They sat together on the bench. They were cheering for each other. There was some redemption for them. They got back into our lineup, and they don’t want to give those spots up.
Good on them. It wasn’t a coaching genius by any means. Had they not done what they did at the end of the year, I wouldn’t have seen it or known that it was there. They earned it.
How have you seen Aaron Ekblad help stabilize your three defense pairings over the last three wins?
Maurice: It just takes the pressure off the rest of the group. It takes the pressure off even Sylvain Lefebvre in terms of the matchup. We have a different matchup depth. If you look at the minutes last night, it takes the minutes off those guys. We don’t have to push people outside of a normal range.
And then he is just good. The progress that Aaron has made over the last three years is remarkable in terms of changing his style of play and then excelling in that new style. He is a physical, hard-gap man. The points are secondary to how we value his game, but it is interesting, then, that he puts up more points.
How hard was the process of adjusting to the game Ekblad plays now?
Maurice: It is a real process. There is a reason why he was viewed as an offensive defenseman. He has that ability and skill. There is just so much more to the game than defensemen creating offense.
It takes a little bit of faith to value other parts of your game, but we find this with Aaron, and I think we are going to find it with Seth Jones as well: When your focus is on a different part of the game, and you get that part right, the offense becomes something that follows along and improves. It’s from a secondary importance, but it improves to a point where you get more offense in the end.
You’ve spoken at length about Sam Reinhart’s intelligence. Where do you see it manifesting the most?
Maurice: It would be in his ability to adapt his game to the style of game and the style of team he plays against. This year, especially, there were also certain fatigue levels he faced over the course of the year.
We are as fresh, probably, right now as we have been all year because of our schedule. He was clocking to play 86 regular-season games. He played more hockey than anyone else in the league. There were some nights when the legs weren’t quite there. He just adapted the way he played. He didn’t cover as much ice. He made his earlier reads and watched his shift length.
It is in his adaptation to the game. He doesn’t play the same game every night. Where some guys will say, “I just didn’t have my A game, so I didn’t play well tonight,” he will just adapt and play a different style — more patient at times. If he is feeling it, there is a lot of jump, and he is very physical, but he can be very effective in different styles.
