Paul Maurice Pins Panthers Woes on Himself, Brings Fire to Practice
Deep into a 1-6-0 slide, Florida Panthers coach Paul Maurice pinned his team’s woes on himself, and did everything he could to get some fire out of them during Tuesday morning’s practice.
FORT LAUDERDALE — With the Florida Panthers going through their roughest stretch in quite a while coach Paul Maurice was very candid when asked why he thought it was the case.
“It’s nothing wrong with the team,” Maurice said. “The coach sucks in the last three weeks. I’ve got to re-establish a game. They do what we ask them to do. They play hard, but we’re off our identity and off our style of hockey, and that’s my responsibility.”
The defending Stanley Cup champions lost their fourth-straight game and their sixth in the past seven on Monday night — a 4-1 blunder to the Alex Ovechkin-less Washington Capitals — and Maurice came out trying to get the most out of his team when practice rolled around at noon on Tuesday.
Maurice did not like the way his team played in that game, and he pinned it on himself for not getting it out of them.
“I don’t like the way my team is playing, and I don’t blame them because I’ve seen them do it,” Maurice said. “I know they can do it, I know it’s hard, but I don’t like the way they are playing. I haven’t been able to get it out of them.”
He was preaching to his team — with fire, and some f-bombs — to be harder on the puck and get bodies to the net.
They ran hard drills doing just that for 20 minutes in the meantime.
“I think that’s what we need right now,” Gustav Forsling said. “Obviously, we’re not happy with our results and I think it starts in practice.”
It was certainly not the “Legs Feed the Wolf” practice from Miracle on Ice, or anything of that intensity — it was 20 minutes of hard battles near the net, putting the indenity the Panthers have built into practice.
Maurice doesn’t believe in bag skating his players, especially not players who have gone out there and won a Stanley Cup as recently as they did, but something needed to change.
He hopes that helps re-focus them going into a match-up with the Atlantic Division-leading Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday night.
“One option is that you don’t like the way your team is playing, so you take them out and you bag skate them,” Maurice said. “That’s foolish, right?
“They haven’t earned that. That makes no sense. The old bag skate to me is one of the first signs that you clearly don’t have your handle on it. So, you’re going to take them out and make sure the media knows how tough and bad you are that you are going to skate them into the ice.
“On the other end, you don’t do anything. ‘You might be a little tired, long trip to Finland…’ We’re not doing that. So, get to work, I’ll fix it.”
INJURY UPDATES:
Anton Lundell did not skate with the team on Tuesday after taking a puck to the mouth in Monday night’s loss. He did finish the game.
Maurice said that the 23-year-old center was OK.
“He just got hit in the face with a puck,” Maurice said. “It split through, he got stitches on both sides, so his head was a little swollen, and he’s fine.”
Dmitry Kulikov missed Tuesday’s practice with a non-hockey medical issue. A “bad tooth,” per Maurice.
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