CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. (AP) — The Florida Panthers have been by way of precisely 1 day of observe. Preseason games start subsequent week. The common year commences future month and goes till mid-April. The grind is just commencing.
However, Paul Maurice is in playoff method.
The Maurice era began Thursday with the initially working day of teaching camp, with much more than 50 gamers break up into two on-ice classes. The new mentor promptly set the tone for the team’s expectations — a Stanley Cup — and started off to instill what he believes is the ideal mindset from the outset.
“There’s no position in practicing for something which is not heading to occur. … But how we practice and how we put together has to be linked to that, simply because it’s a problem for every team to make the playoffs,” Maurice said. “Shocks you to say that, but it is real. This is a tough sport, and we have to put together for that.”
It was his formal debut, as properly as the a single for new Florida forward Matthew Tkachuk, the prize of the Panthers’ offseason who arrived to the team in a trade that sent Jonathan Huberdeau and MacKenzie Weegar to Calgary.
Tkachuk was all smiles soon after his initial apply.
“There’s a ton of new pieces below,” Tkachuk reported. “There’s new every thing. And, you know, me coming in as a new dude, I in fact come to feel a lot more comfy with a new coaching workers since everybody’s in the exact boat, trying to get caught up to speed on what they want and what the anticipations are. And I feel they are rather obvious that they are going to be really powerful procedures. It’s just a really specialist frame of mind all around in this article.”
Maurice’s procedure will not carry enormous adjust to the Panthers, simply because there is no require for it. Florida had the finest report in the NHL very last year, profitable the Presidents’ Trophy for the first time, but received swept in the second spherical of the playoffs by rival Tampa Bay.
They were being a fantastic group past season. They may possibly have the parts now to grow to be a excellent workforce. But they aren’t a championship workforce nevertheless. And switching that is obviously Maurice’s prime priority, so there’s no reason to hold out until eventually March or April to start that method.
“I assume it is excellent,” defenseman Radko Gudas claimed. “He understands the sport so very well, that he is aware that the points we have been accomplishing are functioning and sees the factors that aren’t working. And he observed the way we exited the playoffs final 12 months and he absolutely does not want to do that this year. So, he claimed ideal absent, from the begin, the matters he would like the workforce to be doing the job on.”
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