Paul Maurice is accelerating the pace, forcing battle-tested stars into high-intensity drills and special teams work early to maximize an unprecedented, condensed schedule before the regular season arrives.
Training camp is going to look a little different for the Florida Panthers this month than it has in past years.
That’s what will happen when you combine a longer-than-usual offseason and an abbreviated training camp and preseason schedule.
This year was the first over the past five that the Panthers did not play hockey until at least late May. They reached the second round during the 2022 playoffs and then played in the Stanley Cup Final in 2023, 2024 and 2025, winning championships during the latter two trips.
Now the Cats are entering a new season after not making playoffs for the first time since 2019, and they’re doing it in a year where the regular season is two games longer and training camp and the preseason have been cut shorter.
“There is no team in the league that's gone through what the teams will go through,” Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice said Wednesday. “This is the shortest camp that I'll have ever been a part of. Fewest number of exhibition games, mandates on the number of games guys can play, veterans can play, so we have to learn real fast what the right (process will be).”
Maurice explained that he plans to change the way he handles his players during camp, now choosing to work his veterans early in the preseason instead of holding them back longer.
He also wants to get into the regular season meetings and preparation sooner rather than later, and this new way of running his veterans lends into that mindset.
“The longer you keep your teams in split groups, you can't work your special teams because you've got power plays on two different surfaces against different killers,” Maurice said. “It's not right, so we're going to run hard early with those, and then shut them down, and look at the last six days of training camp as a between series break in the playoffs. We’ll go right to special teams and things that we usually push till much later in the camp. But what we're doing with the new guys is exactly what we're doing with the veterans. If every player in this training camp had played for us last year, we’re going right back to basics, right back to the simplest things we do, the hardest things we do, and we're starting there. So, for the new guys, this is a great time to come here because we're starting with day one video.”
Considering the long offseason, the consensus from Panthers players this week has been that they just wanted to hit the ice and get started.
Regardless of how long or short training camp ends up, Maurice’s guys feel they’ll be ready when the games start to count.
“It doesn't matter,” said Panthers defenseman Aaron Ekblad. “There could be a three-day training camp, and we'll get ourselves prepared.”
Florida’s first official training camp practice started at 10 a.m. on Thursday.
They’ll run a few days of practices before getting into their four-game preseason schedule, which will take place over a seven-day span starting on Sunday against the Carolina Hurricanes.
“I think it's a unique experience for everybody,” said Panthers forward Brady Tkachuk. “Everybody's got to go through that shorter camp than what we've expected and what we've gone through in the past.”
With Maurice planning to push his veteran players harder during the early stages of camp, it will be interesting to see how they respond to the workload.
Last year, when Florida brought over 20 more players to their camp than this year (72 to 51), Maurice held his veterans back during the first days, abbreviating their exposure with such a large group and essentially giving them a preview of what this year’s shorter camp could be like.
“Once you start, the only thing that probably changes is you're probably able to do a little bit more on ice, get those reps in at a higher pace, as opposed to getting your rest as much as possible,” said Panthers forward Sam Reinhart. “The shorter training camp is something everyone's going through. It’s something that’s not really new to us; we tried it out a little bit last year. The quicker you can feel up to your best and get that pace high and intensity high, the better off you'll be.”
It certainly helps that many of Florida’s veteran players, including Ekblad, Reinhart, the Tkachuk brothers and Panthers captain Sasha Barkov, have all be taking part in informal workouts at the team’s practice rink in Fort Lauderdale over the past several weeks.
Sometimes working with skills coaches, sometimes setting their own pace and drills, the players have been ramping themselves up in anticipation of hitting the ground running when Opening Night arrives at the end of the month.
That’s why for some, the shorter training camp doesn’t feel like much of a difference.
“I still think training camp is too long, but that's maybe just me,” said Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk. “Guys have been here since like August 20th. Maybe we haven't been doing Paul's skates at the end of practice, but they've still been hard. Everybody's still pulling the rope the same way right now. Guys are in the weight room all day. We've been at this for at least a few weeks now, so I don't think we should have an issue once camp starts, once the season starts.”
Ultimately, the plan for camp is something that Maurice and his staff worked and tinkered with throughout the summer.
It’s a process that started immediately after last season ended, continued when the coaches and managers returned to South Florida around the NHL Draft and free agency, and finally came to fruition as the players began making their way back to Fort Lauderdale.
“One of the things I wrestled with this summer was how to tackle this,” Maurice explained. “The first one is we run a hard camp, but if you power your team for let's say 10 days, you're not right for two days after that, so it has to be a little bit more selective, but I still have to get that message across, and it still has to be hard and it has to be fast.”
Under Maurice, Florida has become one of the hardest teams to play against, combining speed, puck possession and suffocating checking.
It’s an incredibly difficult way to play on a daily basis, and it something the Panthers have strived at.
We’ll see if Maurice can keep the train moving amid the new adjustments to training camp.
“Sometimes you don't know when you tweak your drills, what's going to happen,” he said. “But we'll go real hard.”
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