George Richards, FHN Publisher
FORT LAUDERDALE — In the moments following the Florida Panthers winning the Stanley Cup, Paul Maurice says he missed all the good stuff.
Blame it on the media.
It was sheer madness on the ice following Florida’s 2-1 win over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 7, and all of the different NHL reporters wanted a moment of Maurice’s time to get a glimpse into what this hockey lifer was feeling after such a momentous victory.
Hours later, once he retreated to his office for a moment, a television was tuned to a loop of the postgame celebration.
There was captain Sasha Barkov lifting the Stanley Cup high in the air, skating around the Sunrise ice. Then he handed it to Sergei Bobrovsky, who gave it to Kyle Okposo.
On and on and went.
So, Maurice decided to sit and watch it for the first time.
Meanwhile, a party continued to rage in the Florida locker room underneath the arena.
Maurice just wanted to soak in what had just transpired. There would be plenty of time to party.
No one got shorted on that front.
“What I spent the most time doing that night was not drinking champagne, it was watching people,” Maurice told Florida Hockey Now last week. “Just watching it all. I lost a block of time there because of all the media requirements.
“When I got back into the room after being out on the ice for a while, the television loop was playing all the guys skating around the ice with the Stanley Cup. And I had not seen any of it. I just sat in the coaches room for an hour watching that.
“And it was fantastic.”
Last summer was one of reflection for Paul Maurice and the Panthers.
A surprising and memorable run to the Stanley Cup Final ended with a thud as Florida was dropped in 5 by the Vegas Golden Knights.
It took Maurice some time to get over that loss.
“It did not happen until I walked into this rink in August,” Maurice told FHN at the start of training camp in 2023.
“You have to see the players. Once you see the players, you start getting fired up all over again. You’re like, ‘to hell with it, let’s do it again.’ The first two or three weeks, (losing) is the only thing that was in your head. It is all you see. Then, slowly, you start to see the good.”
This summer, there was nothing but good.
Maurice has been coaching hockey for a long time and to much acclaim.
But he has coached some dog teams over the course of his career, and, critics often pointed to the fact that no other coach in NHL history has lost more games than Paul Maurice.
Now that he is finally a Stanley Cup champion, no one is going to bring that up anymore.
“How do we put it into words what he has done in his career and what he has meant?” Bill Zito said.
“The ups-and-downs and the level of quality person he is? I cannot say enough.’’
Winning that Cup is something that no one can ever take away from him.
“It seems to me, as you age, you get a different perspective on life and what’s important and valuable,’’ Maurice said before the 2024 Final began.
“I need to win one. Now, it’s not going to change the section of my life that’s not related to hockey at all. That’s the truth. That’s how I feel. I’m 30 years into this thing. Wouldn’t mind winning one. … Yeah, I’d like to really win one, man.’’
Once the Panthers won, he was in the middle of giving an emotional interview when goalie Spencer Knight skated up with the Stanley Cup.
Maurice whispered something to Knight, then gave him a peck on the head.
The Stanley Cup was then lifted high into the air by Paul Maurice for the first time.
The second time Maurice lifted the Cup, he said, came during his infamous turn on stage at the team’s beachside celebration.
He has not lifted it since.
“There has not been a moment where the feeling that you had just won the Stanley Cup hit me,” Maurice said.
`“That would give the impression that feeling had passed. And it has not passed. For me, it was more peaceful than anything else. I was overcome with a sense of peace. Certainly, there was jubilation and all of that. But that was not what has lasted. What has lasted is the sense of peace.”
When it came to having his day with the Stanley Cup, Maurice chose to have it around the time of a family wedding in Windsor, Ont.
He knew his extended family and many close friends would be in town, so, that seemed to be a perfect time to invite the Cup to join the party.
The Stanley Cup, Paul Maurice now knows, does not belong to him nor to any of his players.
It is meant to be shared with others. His players, coaches, and staff have been very good at sharing it with everyone they know or just met.
These are memories no one will ever be able to take away.
For fans and those watching from the outside, the biggest memory of Maurice through all of this may have been the parade in which he dropped so many curse words that WPLG-10 had to cut away from its live coverage.
Maurice still smiles when he thinks about what led up to that moment on stage.
Loading up into the double-decker buses and heading to the beach from the IcePlex near his home in Fort Lauderdale is, again, something he will never forget.
“It was so Florida Panthers,’’ Maurice said with a grin. “When we left here it had started raining. We’re heading down Sunrise to the beach and there’s like 10 people standing there. So, in my head, that made sense to me. It was pouring rain, right? No one is going to be there. Maybe a couple of hundred people.
“Then we turned that corner and it was ‘Oh my God!’ It took hours to get through all of it. What a great metaphor for my experience here: I heard they were good guys here, and then you get into the room and it’s ‘Oh my God, these guys are unbelievable!’
“We thought we would have a nice, little parade down the beach and a couple hundred thousand people are partying in the rain with us.
“It was a fitting end to the year that we had.”