Panthers not worried about a Stanley Cup hangover, remain hungry to win
Florida opens training camp on Thursday at the Baptist Health IceDen in Fort Lauderdale
We made it.
On Thursday morning in Fort Lauderdale, the Florida Panthers will hit the ice and open their 2024 Training Camp.
It’s the first time the Panthers are starting a brand-new hockey season as the defending Stanley Cup Champions.
It will also be the Cats first training camp at the Baptist Health IcePlex, the state-of-the-art training facility that opened right around Christmas last year.
The Panthers had a shorter summer than most, but it was one filled making lifelong memories with each other, family members and friends…and, of course, the Stanley Cup.
But that’s all over now. It’s time to lock back in and try to win the thing again.
“We'll be very sure that our day is completely focused on what we're doing, not living in the past, and maybe more importantly, that whole hangover idea of not living in the future,” said Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice.
It will be the job of Maurice and his staff to do just that, keeping the players, and perhaps themselves, focused on the task at hand.
There are going to be ebbs and flows, ups and downs, during the season, but the Panthers know they have an excellent team that should be competing for the Stanley Cup again.
“I see the competitiveness from all the guys in the room,” said Panthers forward Sam Reinhart. “That's infectious. You start winning, you start wanting more.”
Hard work and discipline have been cornerstones of Florida’s ascension since Maurice’s arrival.
The Panthers are asked to play a physically demanding, high-speed defensive game that they have perfected over the past two seasons. It’s why they’ve become one of the most feared teams in the league.
But now there will be new challenges, both on and off the ice.
Keeping a level head, regardless of how good or bad things may be at the time, is another thing the Panthers have done well while under Maurice’s watch.
It will be key if they want to maintain their mental edge this season, because as defending Cup champs, both the good times and the bad times will be amplified exponentially.
“We're going to get beat in November,” Maurice said. “I'm going to end up answering this to you people, and I understand that, but we're going to get beat November in a game that will be against a Western Conference team that didn't make the playoffs last year and probably won't make the playoffs this year, and it will be assigned a hangover loss, and it won't be true because we lost the exact same game the last two years. It'll just be a perspective of the why, because it's the standard that, in some ways, that this team gets held to, that if you win the Stanley Cup, then you should win every game, and that's just not real. So we’ll handle our day in the right perspective of where we're at, and move forward.”
Yeah, that “H” word is probably going to follow the Panthers around anytime something doesn’t go their way in the coming weeks and months.
Such is life when you’re the champ.
Heavy lies the crown, eh?
Based off what Maurice and his players have said when asked about finding the hunger to win now that they’ve already won a championship, it doesn’t sound like they will be lacking for any sort of drive or motivation.
It's not something you can explain before (winning a Cup), but I would say this lifestyle takes a source of energy,” Maurice said. “You have to have a driver that pushes you. Looking backward, you’d say it's the quest for the Cup, and it's real, but being that only one team wins it, there's got to be another driver, and that's the constant push forward to make things better, to drive a program and improve a program. But that source, sometimes, I don't know that it’s negative, but sometimes it's dark. You lose a game, you don't go to sleep till three, but you get up at five to do the video because you want to grind. You've got to be better the next day. Now maybe you just get this completely different source of energy that now you have a feeling of what it's like, and you want it more. It's so hard to explain, but I don't think we're going to be short on energy this year.”
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