Panthers coach Paul Maurice is rested and refreshed. Now he’s set to lead the Cup champs into camp

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Paul Maurice spent his summer on a Canadian lake. Its location would be best described as in the middle of nowhere. He typically would have morning coffee with his wife, either on the dock or inside the screened-in porch depending on how bad the black flies were that day. Sometimes it lasted 30 minutes. Sometimes it lasted for hours.

And he loved the quiet.

“It was just peaceful,” he said.

Put simply, the coach of the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers — who spent 30 years chasing hockey’s biggest prize — needed a break. A long break. He needed to get away from practices and game plans, microphones and recorders. So, he packed up the car not long after the Panthers’ championship parade (one where he stole the show with an emotional, sometimes profane speech) and made the three-day drive to Canada, seeking solitude and quiet and a place to reflect and unwind.

He’s back home now, rested and ready. His third season with the Panthers starts Thursday when training camp formally opens — with his eyes not looking back at what Florida just won, but instead looking forward at how the team can try to win the Cup again.

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“This is hyperbole, and it’s egregious hyperbole,” Maurice said in an interview with The Associated Press. “If you sat here for 100 years to explain to me what winning the Stanley Cup is like, you could never have explained it to me. You can’t know. But it’s not what I thought it would be, either.”

It’s better than he thought.

The partying — for the coach, anyway — lasted a few days. He has lifted the Cup over his head on only two occasions. The first was on the ice, the night that Florida beat Edmonton 2-1 in Game 7 to win a title after wasting a 3-0 series lead and staring down immense pressure in the deciding game. The second was at the championship parade a few days later. He has held the Cup since but hasn’t lifted it over his head since the parade.

“You don’t win the Cup,” Maurice said. “What I realized is you share it. It’s not yours.”

To him, this summer was about those little moments of sharing. He and his father held the Cup together a few weeks ago, each giving a smile. Words weren’t necessary to describe what the moment meant to them. Nor were they necessary when one of his wife’s uncles — a French-Canadian man, a lifelong hockey lover who uses a walker to help himself get around — saw the Cup. He did not need his walker in that moment. It was pushed to the side, so the man’s hands would be free to hug the Cup as tears welled in his eyes.

“The power of that thing, the power of the Cup, is just silly,” Maurice said. “It’s indescribable. The best part of a day like that is watching all the people around you be happy at the same time.”

In the hockey sense, in the career-achievement sense, he is happy. Happier than ever, really.

Maurice is fourth all time in regular-season wins among NHL coaches. The 15th game of Florida’s season — Nov. 9 at home against Philadelphia — will be the 2,000th of his career, including playoffs, a milestone that only Scotty Bowman has reached. His place in coaching history was secure before Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. It might have been a very different story if the Panthers had lost Game 7 and blown a 3-0 series lead. But they won, and finally a coaching lifer got his title.

“The one thing I have spent almost no time thinking about — because it’s almost too frightening — is ‘what if we hadn’t?’ I won’t allow myself to look over that cliff,” Maurice said. “I don’t have to, so I don’t.”

He’s been back in South Florida for a couple of weeks. The celebrations for some in the organization are still happening — the Cup was at the arena where the Miami Heat play on Sunday, some players and employees there getting to bask in the title glow — but Maurice is trying hard to keep the focus on camp and the new season.

“What’s the remnant of the Florida Panthers winning the Stanley Cup? To me, it’s the small smile that people share with each other, the knowing smile,” Maurice said. “It’s the memory you get to keep. The shared memory, that’s where the good stuff is. The shared smile between two people when we cross in the hallway. That’s what we have.”

And starting Thursday, when he blows the first whistle of training camp, that’s what he’ll start chasing again.

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AP NHL: https://www.apnews.com/hub/NHL