Paul Maurice Becomes Winningest Coach in Florida Panthers History
With a 3-1 win over the San Jose Sharks, Paul Maurice broke the record for the most wins in Florida Panthers at 111. It’s a modest mark, but one that helps solidify his legacy.
With a 3-1 win over the San Jose Sharks, Paul Maurice became the winningest coach in the history of the Florida Panthers.
He did so just the 28th game into his third season as head coach of the Panthers after leading the team to back-to-back Stanley Cup Final berths and a Cup win this past season.
In just a short amount of time, Maurice helped breathe legitimacy into a franchise that was desperately seeking it.
Even if the number he cleared to claim that milestone was not all that high.
“What’s the number?” Maurice asked when notified of the milestone by the editor of this publication.
The answer was 111 games, which Jacques Martin has held since 2008 after completing a 246-game tenure with a 110-100-36 record.
“I would say it’s not a big milestone,” Maurice said after learning of the number. “That’s three 40-win seasons. You don’t make the playoffs on 40 wins.
“So, I like the first part of that. I’ll take the first part. I really appreciate that. I’m pleased that the team has played well for two-and-a-half years, it’s just not a very big number. I’m not bragging, but there will be no tattoo. I won’t be getting 111 tattoed anywhere.”
The number might not be big, but everything he has done for this franchise has been more than just tattoo-worthy.
(Although that big, silver trophy his team paraded around Fort Lauderdale Beach this past summer would make for a good tattoo.)
But his impact is on a far larger scale than just the one banner hanging in the stands of Amerant Bank Arena.
“He’s meant a lot,” captain Aleksander Barkov said. “He knows how to prepare the team, to win games and to play the right way, and that’s the most important thing. He wants us to play the right way and the wins will come. And on top of that, he’s a great human being and he is easy to talk to. He knows how to handle every single guy in this room, so I’m really happy to have him and to play for him.”
In his 12-year tenure on the Panthers, Barkov played for seven different coaches. Maurice has now coached the most games out of all seven of those coaches, with Gerard Gallant, who was fired 22 games into his third season, being the previous longest-tenured.
He and Joel Quenneville, who resigned eight games into his third season as head coach after his inaction in the Chicago Blackhawks’ 2010 sexual assault scandal was revealed in a 2022 report, are the only two coaches Barkov had who lasted past their second season.
Maurice is already guaranteed to stick around for much longer than that after he agreed to a multi-year contract extension in October.
“It’s nice to have a coach for a long time,” Barkov said. “He does the right things every single day, he works hard and we see that. And we want to work really hard for him.”
The hiring of Maurice came at a time when general manager Bill Zito was seeking a culture shift.
One that strayed away from the flimsy run-and-gun style of game that won the team a Presidents’ Trophy in 2021-22 but saw the team get swept easily in the second round of the playoffs by a Tampa Bay Lightning team that played a structured style of game.
Maurice brought that, bringing a game that predicated on a hard forecheck and a stable defense, and two weeks after hiring his coach, Zito swung for the fences and acquired Matthew Tkachuk from the Calgary Flames to accelerate that culture shift.
They’ve done that in tandem pretty well.
Tkachuk’s hard-checking style of game and emotional brand of leadership fit seamlessly with what Maurice was trying to do, and after a bit of a slow start to Maurice’s first season, they have not slowed down ever since.
And the style that Maurice brought with him has set a standard for everyone in Florida’s room that the franchise has never had before.
“It’s nice knowing what’s happening and what to expect,” Tkachuk said. “We seem to, for the most part, have a very similar training staff, coaches and everybody, so it’s just been very familiar to me since the first day, so he’s been a big part of that.
“Stability is so important. You want to know what to expect and know how to play, and he’s brought that for us.”
So, while the number of wins Maurice hit may not be large, he did ensure one thing:
He is undoubtedly the greatest head coach in the history of the Florida Panthers.
Maurice owns the franchise record for wins (111), playoff wins (29), playoff series wins (7), Stanley Cup Final appearances (2) and became the first and only coach in team history to hoist the Stanley Cup.
He’s had a blast in the process, and he only wants to add more accomplishments to that list.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” Maurice said. “The intensity, the ups and downs, and the success is what’s made it.
“These guys are fun to coach. We’ve been in some wild games, some incredibly difficult situations and found a way. We reached the summit together, so yeah. I didn’t mean to mock the number. Its just that you come to the rink now and this is such a good team. You’d think that number would be around 400 or 500.
“But I’ve got time.”