No, the Panthers didn't want a long offseason. But they want to make the best of it as well

Audio By Carbonatix

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Paul Maurice was hired as coach of the Florida Panthers nearly four full years ago, all the way back in June 2022.

So, technically, he has lived in Florida.

He just hasn't experienced Florida like a resident. That's about to change.

There are no playoff games for the Panthers this spring, no fourth consecutive trip to the Stanley Cup Final awaiting, no third consecutive title to celebrate. And while that doesn't sit well with anyone, the silver lining to not winning hockey's silver chalice is that the Panthers — who have played more games than any other team over Maurice's four seasons — now get a break, whether they want it or not.

Maybe in a month or so, Maurice will head to Canada. But for a few weeks — with some work on next season mixed in there as well — Maurice is finally going to see what the Florida lifestyle is about.

“I've never really lived in Florida,” Maurice said Thursday, the first full day of Florida's offseason. “I’ve driven here, got out of the car, went to the rink, coached the season, got back in the car, tried to squeeze in six weeks.

"So, we’re going to spend some time getting to hang out in Florida and feel it get a little warmer over the course of four weeks and enjoy that. But we’ll go through the season hard. There are lessons here and we have to find them and then apply them next year.”

He said all that Thursday while wearing an untucked polo shirt and khaki shorts, indicators that vacation mode is clearly starting to be activated. The Panthers were banged up, bruised and broken all season long, and getting a full offseason to rest would seem to be a good thing for a team that almost certainly will have a roster dominated by 30somethings — extremely talented ones, mind you, but 30somethings nonetheless — on the ice most nights next season.

Do they need a break? Probably.

Do they want a break? They do not.

“Definitely not ideal," Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk said. "It's a long summer, and nobody in this locker room likes long summers, so it’s going to be weird. All we have to do is take advantage of it. Get some rest, whatever guys have been dealing with, get it healed up and get after the summer because we’ve got one goal next year and that’s making the playoffs. And then we go from there.”

The core of the team — Tkachuk, Aleksander Barkov, Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett, Seth Jones, Aaron Ekblad, Gustav Forsling, Niko Mikkola, Carter Verhaeghe, Brad Marchand and more — all are under contract to be back. A notable exception from that list is goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, who'll be a free agent.

That one will surely come down to money.

“The only guy that I will be recruiting — and hopefully don't have to recruit him — is Bob,” Tkachuk said. “We can't lose him. He's our guy. He's going to get us back to where we want to be. The most important piece of our team the last few years, what he's done. It's just the character, the work ethic, the drive, he sets a tone on ice and off ice.”

The Panthers had somewhere around 550 man-games lost to injury this season. They ended the season with 14 players hurt, eight with broken bones. Some of that is just bad luck, and some will be studied by the team's analytic gurus — some of whom will be visiting players at their homes around the world this summer to see how the offseason is treating them.

“And now we prepare. We re-evaluate and come up with some ideas and we re-evaluate those ideas and just keep doing it over and over and over," Panthers general manager and hockey operations president Bill Zito said. “And we’ll spend a significant part of the summer planning and reviewing. There's a lot of moving parts and a lot what-ifs, but we’ll get to the bottom of it.”

Marchand said there's still tons of reason to believe Florida will return to contending status — provided, of course, that the team's health situations get right. He got hurt in December, kept playing because the Olympics and being part of Team Canada had been basically a lifelong goal, then had to basically shut it down for the final weeks.

“I come in the room every day, I’m thankful and grateful,” Marchand said. “And the older you get, you don’t take these days for granted. Regardless of if you win or you lose, we’re very fortunate to do what we do and play a game for a living, meet great people, travel to great places, and live out a dream. So, yeah, it’s unfortunate that we didn’t win, but when you look back on the year, it was a hell of a year.”

___

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl