Paul Maurice, Panthers Pregame: Ottawa Senators at Florida, Oct. 11, 2025

Paul Maurice, Panthers Pregame: Ottawa Senators at Florida, Oct. 11, 2025

Yeah. So, they know what it is now. Tonight, they’re going to get together and decide how they’re going to proceed with it, and that will change the uh that will change the rehab time. So, we’ll give that to you tomorrow, probably once they make a decision what they’re going to do with it. So, what they’re looking at is a potential for surgery versus rehab. Yep, that’s a possibility. Ben was talking about how the strength of this team is when a guy does come in, it’s an experienced guy. So, you move coming in, played a ton of games you last year, played in the playoffs. How nice is it to know when the replacement guy is a guy that you know played so much for you already? I don’t know, Doug. What would you say? 76 games. Yeah. So, he’s he’s not really a replacement guy. We just fairly deep on the blue line. Each year his training camp has gotten better and better. When you have a player that sits in the seven hole or maybe the 13th forward, you’re not particularly sure what you’re going to get when they come in, especially if they’ve sat out for a block of time. With UI, we have a really high expectation of what his game is going to look like tonight. and he’s got enough experience that he should have that expectation too. You know, he’s he’s going into game three and he’s a guy who ran a whole bunch of games, but we also have a far more experienced player than we had two years ago and we think he Yeah, he he fits in right. It should be we’re expecting a fairly simple transition for him. Coach, when it comes to we always talk about how he’s done whatever this team has asked him to do, and that includes moving over forward when he needs some depth. What have you noticed about his ability to adapt his game to whatever you ask him? I think there’s I think is actually quite a creative player and I think when we put him up front it’s kind of like I take the handcuffs off him and he’s full dangle and I I love that about him. And then we’ve tried to kind of just narrow that. One of the things that he do is he he can he can get into holes and he can make plays. He can spin off guys. We just want that in certain areas of his game. which makes him different, right? Like he’s a different player than Dimmitri is, but he’s he’s got some really good NHL things. We just want to make sure that we don’t see him every shift, but we also want to see him. So, that’s kind of the balance for especially when you’re a player trying to come in from the outside. You’re sitting in that extra player role and you come in, you’ve got a skill set that says, “I can make some plays.” But Barky can turn a couple over in the offensive zone. and he’s still going out the next shift. It’s a little the threshold for those extra guys is it how do you balance that? I think he’s got it figured out. We want him to get into holes. We want him to make some plays and then we want them to also recognize the the risk level of each play. And you played so many games for you last year, right? It’s got to be a comfort level with that. Yeah, we there wasn’t anything in uh Jeff Peach’s play that would have changed our original opinion. He Jeff had a really good camp. Um, so he he goes in the six. It just fit. It worked. But Uvisas, you’re looking at his training camp going, “Well, he should be in the lineup, right? He’s he’s an NHL defenseman.” In our mind, that’s a luxury. So, the benefit to us is we found him, so we get to keep him. Um, but he’s an NHL defenseman that shouldn’t be sitting in the seventh hole. So, now that he’s going in, we’re not expecting anything less than an NHL defenseman. And back to to Um, regardless of surgery or, you know, rehab, he’ll be out for a while. So, you’re not necessarily. No. Yeah. I wouldn’t take it. Don’t Don’t run too hard with it. I’ll tell you I’ll tell you tomorrow, right? And then we’ll give you exactly what it is and then you’ll understand. Looking at or just call Addie. Looking at the center, their team that’s been building for a while here, finally made the playoffs last year. Yeah. Do you notice anything about those young groups when they, you know, do take that set, make the playoffs, and they come back the following year? Do they look different? Do they feel different against them? I think to get to the playoffs, you have to have a style of play. Everybody says identity that everybody understands we’re going to play this way. So, I don’t I don’t think you’ll lock into the playoffs. I think you have to have played a certain way for a certain number of games to give yourself a chance to it’s very hard to get into the playoffs. So, then they keep that identity. They get to keep that first bit of feel good. I think Ottawa’s done a great job with it. We had great games with them. We played game two last year was against Ottawa in Ottawa. We got beat 3-1, I think, maybe on an empty netter. It was a heck of a game. I mean, they they had changed drastically in that kind of acceptance of this isn’t just a skill show. They played hard and played well. And I I felt all our games I think we play very similar styles of of hockey and I think our games are are really good. They’re hard, they’re heavy, but they’re fast. They’re skilled. Goalies got to be good. Defense got to skate. So I got a high really Travis I think is a fantastic coach and I think he gets his players to play with some passion and and enjoy what they’re doing. So this be a good one tonight. in those last 10, 15 games, you know, you guys, you had them in your rearview mirror and all of a sudden, here they come. Yeah, we we beat them by a point. Is that accurate? Okay. Well, that’s a point over 82. That’s a rounding error. It’s an you know, so we had the same regular season that they did last year. Theirs was legit. And you get in the playoffs, you can lose in the front first round, you can win the Stanley Cup and almost play the exact same hockey. When we look back, we attach this brilliance to the team that won. and they won and they get to do that and then those other teams are right there. They’re just all right there. There’s no I don’t we don’t feel anyway like we hit Tampa and Boston the last three years. So there’s no easy first round. You can lose in the first round and be a really really good team. You missed it last year because he was injured, but Nick Cousins’s long awaited return. Look at the welcome back video finally tonight. You talk about things that have been built here and we go back to the room and room is some of those original room guys, cousins Lombberg Mtor kind of brought some of that loose and character that what did he do to kind of help build the foundation of that a bit of the center of it right it’s a little bit like he’s got a scratch and claw on the ice and and battle and there was the stall brothers too they were all in him and I think I think uh Nick had to kind of fight for it in there because he’s just any guy that has 16 nicknames is welll liked right he hears it so he was a part of that have fun, play hard thing. We were trying to get together to build take some of the pressure off. You win the President’s Trophy, you don’t win, you there’s a tension there that we’re really good team. And so he was part of that really important part of that. It’s interesting. I think looks like Ottawa’s going through the same thing we went through a couple years ago. And that’s a big part of your room. Chirping, laughing, the occasional scrump. He’s a part of all that. Any other questions? Sergey plays tonight.

Florida Panthers coach Paul Maurice meets the media before they played host to the Ottawa Senators on Oct. 10, 2025.

Florida (2-0) beat Philadelphia on Thursday with goals from Anton Lundell and Brad Marchand; Sergei Bobrovsky made 19 saves.

Ottawa is 1-0.

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Video Courtesy Florida Panthers / Panther Vision