Dave Hyde: Panthers’ Paul Maurice handles playoff losses like no one else
SUNRISE — There’s something uniquely gripping about the manner Paul Maurice discusses Florida Panthers playoff games. He stomped the length of the bench in the second period of Tuesday’s Game 5, snorting and ranting to his players about their mysterious lack of energy to the point you expected cartoon smoke to blow from his ears.
He was properly mad, too, because of all the reasons you don’t expect to lose this time of year, the biggest remains this: They weren’t ready.
How could the Florida Panthers not be ready to go?
You spend a season to reach nights like this.
How could they not be emotionally and desperately ready to bring their best game, finish off Boston, advance to the Eastern Conference Finals, stave off any potential surprise and even gain a few days of valued rest?
“I didn’t like our game,’’ Maurice said after the 2-1 loss that pushed the series to Boston for Friday’s Game 6.
He was then asked about his blow-out anger behind the bench. Its timing was notable, because on the next shift out Sam Reinhart scored the Panthers only goal for a temporary tie at 1-1. And the Panthers picked up their play through the tight third period.
“I don’t know the exact words of the message,’’ Maurice said of his benchside rant afterward. “I felt — I wasn’t mad at them. I understood what they were going through.
“I just thought they needed some profanity in their life. I brought some. I don’t excel at a lot of things in life, but f— me, I’m good at that.”
His deadpan look didn’t change.
“You see what I did there?” he said.
The smoke of the game already was clearing, the series was already being packed for the next leg to Boston and what was left in the aftermath of Game 5 was this simple truth: How you handle losing in the playoffs is as important as winning.
In his two playoff years with the Panthers, Maurice has don’t everything from quoting comic actor Will Ferrell after a loss (“Everybody panic!”), to being upset to dropping the philosophy about how everyone inside a team handles a loss in a seven-game series much better than those outside the team … to Tuesday’s lesson on profanity.
To win on a large scale — and that’s what this Panthers season is about — you have to be willing to take the lessons of losing games in a series in proper stride. The lessons for the Panthers from Game 5 had to do with using their speed, finding their forecheck and primarily not leaving their game in the locker room.
“It’s a losing coach’s line, ‘We had our chances,’ Maurice said. “I didn’t like our game. But at least from where we were in the first (period), we got better in the second and the third.”
The larger truth is this is a night the goalies, Panthers’ Sergei Bobrovsky and Boston’s Jeremy Swayman, kept this game close. Each made five-star stops, going back and forth, and Swayman made one more. That’s how it works sometimes.
The Panthers still have the 3-2 edge in the series and all the confidence that comes with it. But they, of all teams, also know the danger of letting a team up from an elimination game. They were down the same 3-1 to Boston last spring. They won in Boston in Game 5.
“We’ll be back in this room for Game 7,’’ Matthew Tkachuk said to his teammates afterward and was good to his word.
Now it’s Boston players still alive in the season.
“Never say die, we’re going home, and this series is wide open,’’ said Charlie McAvoy, whose winning goal was his first playoff goal in three years. “Let’s go home and win a hockey game.”
What if Boston captain Brad Marchand returns from his injury? What if Boston reverses the lack of a home-ice edge in this series and wins Game 6? Does the pressure switch to the Panthers?
The Panthers still have a grip on this series. But Maurice’s loud rant behind the bench told just what he thought of their effort. His comic bit in the news conference afterward also told how to handle losing a game in a long series.