Panthers head coach Paul Maurice addressed the media after a 6-1 win over the Maple Leafs in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinal playoff series.
On why his team is able to step up in big moments:
Game 7s are players’ games, right? We are at game #94 this year. There is not much coaching. We have been doing it for 93 games coming in. There is nothing new. There are no tactics.
None of you is going to listen to me on this, but I would caution you on applying or assigning… Ah, you guys are going to do it anyway.
Those games are so tight. The emotion and build-up to the game… We owned the first 10 minutes of the first period, and they owned the second 10 minutes. If you flip it, you’d say, “Oh, they came out right.” We came out right, and they found the answer to come back at us. That is the truth.
We scored a goal, and then we got those two. It is just a puck to the net. It is so much closer than you think, but you are going to kill [the Leafs], and they don’t deserve it. That is seven games, and we played well. I didn’t like our first period in Game 1, but we played well in the two losses. We played well in Game 6 and got beaten. That is how tight it is.
That is how I feel. The margin for error is small. Before the puck dropped, there were five teams left in the NHL. Five. All of them are capable of winning. The puck went our way tonight. That is it.
On when he knew the game was in hand and the Leafs were beaten:
Like, never behind the bench. It was 5-1 or 6-1, and there is 4:30 on the clock, and I am running Barkov off the bench because I know the goalie is coming.
That day doesn’t come. What is great for the league is hard for the Maple Leafs and their players. The passion for the Maple Leafs, the scrutiny these men are under, is why everybody else gets paid so much. It is a driver. There is a cost to it — for them — and a challenge.
You could hit one out of the park here, and you are never buying lunch for the rest of your life. But there is a cost for these guys and for their families. When you lose a game like this, it is going to be rough for them.
You are going to go through a whole bunch of things that aren’t wrong but are wrong because they lost. This is a good team. This is a much better team than we played two years ago. It is a much better team than we played 23 years ago in the Conference Final. This team is in that group of teams like ours. There are eight that have a chance, and this one of those teams.
You are going to assign a whole bunch of character flaws that just aren’t true.
On how the Panthers have been able to build a team that thrives in these Game 7 situations:
If the core foundation of your game is the simplest things, it doesn’t matter how your hands feel. It doesn’t matter how your body feels. It doesn’t matter how well you execute. If it’s about how comfortable you are in hard situations, you have a chance.
It starts in training camp for us. It is a grinding season for us — not just because of the games we played, but our schedule was abusive. It turned out to be the right adversity we would need.
We talk about Game 7 in training camp. We want to play a style of game that gives us a chance to win tonight. It gave us a chance to win tonight.
On whether he contemplated challenging Seth Jones’ disallowed 4-0 goal:
No. All of the guys on the end of the earpiece are watching it. In the regular season, I might have. I don’t really consider the context in the regular season; it is about whether I think it is goaltender interference or not.
The call on the ice was goalie interference. It was Seth’s foot that propelled the stick that propelled the puck. We didn’t think we were getting the call back.
If I were on the other bench, I would expect that not to be a good goal. It doesn’t matter whether we argue whether the call was right. I think they made the appropriate assessment. I didn’t think we were changing that.
My number one rule when coaching is, “Do no harm.” I wasn’t going to do that to our team.
On Eetu Luostarinen’s three-point game:
You guys don’t like hearing this, but there has been a Brad Marchand effect there. There is. Lundell scored tonight on a roll off the slot.
He has affected those guys in such a positive way when thinking about the game in the small-area plays. I felt those two guys had it in them, but the role I gave them stunted them. It wouldn’t let them do that when it was about “every puck deep, on it and above it, and every puck at the net.” There is not a lot of creativity in the way that I coach. It is pretty simple.
Brad comes in and goes, “Yeah, we can do all of those things, but we can also make some plays here, fellas.”
It starts in practice. They start close supporting small-area plays. There are some hands there.
Lundell scored 18 as a rookie, but Eetu has some pretty good hands. He missed on one in Game 6, where it was a 2v1 that he brought the puck back on. He was just late getting it off, but it was there for him.
On Jonah Gadjovich fighting his way into the lineup and making a big impact, including a couple of big goals:
It is not a hunch to put him in. He has earned it.
At the end of the season prior, the idea was that if he could get a half-step quicker… He scored 46 goals in major junior. That’s real. He has some hands on him, and he can shoot a puck a ton.
In the role that he is in and the minutes that he plays, there is a tendency not to get faster. You just don’t play enough, so it’s hard skates at the end. Anyway, he did what he needed to do.
That line, for me, was the difference in the series for us. If you are looking for an inflection point, it is that line coming in. And they scored, right? Gadjovich gets the tip, Nosek gets the one, and Gads gets a big one tonight.
They have, in their game, our identity and the way we want to play. And everybody loves the guy. He has twins. Everyone loves Gadj. He takes care of everybody. He fights for them.
Those goals are the big ones.
On what he’s learned about Brad Marchand through the playoffs:
What I didn’t know is what Gregory Campbell did. He has an incredibly positive spirit.
Guys who are vocal and intense will sometimes get up and down your bench, screaming at your bench. They get so wired in the game. He never does that. It is always positive. “Stay in there. Hang in there. That was great.”
We get these two young guys playing with him, and it is borderline legendary status at this point, but he is pumping their tires and is excited every day.
It is his personality that I didn’t know. He has moved into the Matthew Tkachuk (territory); you hate them, and then they get here, and you think, “You are the exact opposite person from who I thought you were.”
He is just a wonderful human being.
