Florida plays an incredibly challenging style and as defending champs, they generally get the best their opponent has to offer every game

The Florida Panthers are building some momentum at a good time of the season.

Rough scheduling, both in terms of game and travel, had Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice and his staff bracing for a rough patch at some point during the first half of the season.

After the Cats reeled off seven straight victories, a streak that included Florida's Finland road trip, it felt like perhaps they were just so good that they'd be able to avoid any kind of a funk.

Nope.

Seven consecutive wins were followed up by a run of six losses in seven games, a stretch in which the Panthers looked far from their usual, aggressive, defensively-sound way of playing.

Did anybody panic? Of course not.

This team just won a Stanley Cup and is built on their ability to endure and overcome difficult situations.

"In the second and third week, we thought we would be behind it a little bit because of our trip to Finland. I think we were," Maurice said. "When I say behind it, we didn't have a lot of energy, didn't have a lot of pop, we weren't getting to where we needed to get to quite as fast. We weren't terrible, but I felt in the last three (games), even though it is at the end of a tougher schedule, you could just feel it in the rink on practice days, the guys started to get a little bit more wired for the game, and it was like that on the bench."

During the team's rough patch, Maurice was quick to point the finger at himself.

We are all quite aware of how good this Panthers team can be, and quite frankly, should be.

Being able to put them in the best position to perform at the pinnacle of their abilities is what Maurice has done a spectacular job of during his tenure in South Florida.

Now well into year three under Maurice, the team is at a level where they can work on correcting any issues or misgivings that may pop up while still using the opportunity to improve and become a better team because of it.

The proof is in the pudding.

"I think we're structurally ahead of where we were in each of the last two years," Maurice said. "So when you cut video, you're not cutting video on where we're out of position on our neutral zone defense, so there's not a lot of technical stuff that we're doing right now."

As Maurice has expressed recently, it's not about his team's ability to just play the game, it's about putting themselves in a state of mind to perform at that level game in and game out.

With their three latest wins coming against two of the top teams in the Eastern Conference – Toronto and Carolina – it appears that the Cats are operating at a level Maurice can be pleased with.

"We're dealing with, and have dealt with, what we thought would be the challenge: It would be the emotional energy to play our game," Maurice said. "Yes, other teams are playing us possibly even harder than they did last year. You're getting everybody's A-game. In the games that we think we were emotionally in tune, we've been pretty darn good."

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