Paul Maurice credits his players for team's second-half turnaround, remarkable first-round upset of top-seed Bruins
Something is happening around the Florida Panthers.
The team that barely squeaked into the playoffs as the last Wild Card has suddenly caught the eye of the entire league.
Yes, the same Panthers team that dismantled its coaching staff and overhauled the team's systems and style of play after having the most successful season in franchise history is seeing all those changes pay off on the grandest of scales.
Once a team that seemed down and out, frustrated over the lack of results despite the amount of talent on the roster, Florida is firing on all cylinders at the perfect time.
The players know what they need to do, where they need to be, who supports who, who goes, who stays…it's exactly the level a team needs to be on if they're going to try embarking on a long playoff run.
"The on-ice hockey part, our meetings are short now because they understand what they're doing," Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice said the morning after Game 7. "But far more important than the coaching part of this is the players. It's the players' room, it's the players' bench now. They've taken it."
The first time Maurice made that kind of statement was after a late-season overtime win in Toronto.
Florida was riding four straight losses, and with just eight games left on their schedule, they were watching their season slip away.
During a timeout for an offside review on a Maple Leafs goal, Maurice couldn't keep his anger in check any longer. He lost it, screaming at his players up and down the bench for what felt like sixty seconds straight.
The challenge turned out to be successful. So was the blown fuse.
It was a turning point. From that moment on, both on and off the ice, Florida's players appeared to take complete ownership of their season.
Now it's reached the point where the coaching staff can just let the Panthers do their thing, and the results are speaking for themselves.
"I felt it a number of times over the course of the year," Maurice explained. "But in the third period of Game 6 (against Boston), when the leads were changing back and forth, the coaches weren't behind the bench pumping tires. We didn't need to. They had it."
A similar situation played out late in Game 7.
Florida was down a goal in the final minutes, trying desperately to tie the game and keep their season from ending.
With about 90 seconds left, Maurice called a timeout.
There was no coaching necessary, no play to draw up, no assignments to go over.
As Maurice said, the players had it. They knew what needed to be done.
"We didn't even go over anything," Panthers winger Matthew Tkachuk said of the timeout. "Guys are so dialed in to what they need to do, they knew their roles, they knew where they are off draws. Everybody was on the same page without even talking about it."
Battle-tested and led by a core group of players who have been through the ringer together, Florida is moving toward uncharted territory.
While a handful of players on the roster have experienced long playoff runs, the majority of the Panthers have yet to get past round two.
That includes Tkachuk, Sam Bennett, Aaron Ekblad, Sam Reinhart, Sergei Bobrovsky and Panthers Captain Sasha Barkov, to name a few.
There is obviously only way to gain that kind of experience.
Florida's players have put in the work and paid their dues.
Now the coaching staff is happy to hand them the keys and let them drive.
"This year, everyone knows what to do, everyone plays the right way, everyone plays the same way," said Barkov. "We play more together and we play harder, and that's what playoff hockey is. You play hard, you play simple, you take what they give you and live to fight another day."
The Panthers have endured this incredibly challenging season and used the experience to grow into a mature group that has figured out what needs to be done for them to be the best versions of themselves while on the ice together.
There are several dates on the calendar that stand out as significant, but during the second-half push that got Florida into the playoffs, and the run that they've been on since, much of the attention is drawn back to that screaming fit in late March.
"We were in such a fight for the last two months of our season, and had done some great things and then wobbled a little bit, so that that win in Toronto maybe refueled us and put us back on a push," Maurice said.
It was quite the push, past the Presidents' Trophy winners and into round two.