Paul Maurice, Panthers Practice: Toronto Maple Leafs at Florida on Tuesday Night

I I think both teams are singularly focused on themselves. Like I don’t think we we go back that far um as in any part of that series has any impact on on the way two teams I said they’re playing how we look. We’re just we’re a different team right now. So um yeah, both trying to find their grip a little bit and that’ll be the focus. In Toronto, when you’re not in the playoff spot, the world is falling apart to the fan base. Oh, no. They just won. It’s all good. Yeah. Rolling. The impression you guys don’t necessarily worry about position so much as your game. And you that that these are just different layers, right? So, when you get down to me talking, that’s all there is to my life, right? The we’ve um where your team is at is really important, but where it’s going and what you want it to look like a month, three months from now is equally important for us. So we we we try to balance the two things. The one we would say is handle your day. You know, did you do today what you need to do to get better and and really narrow that focus down to that? And then your job for me anyway here is to make sure that we’re pointed in the general direction. It’s never a straight line, but we have to keep an eye on where we’re trying to get to. Missed stood out the most to you about Marian’s start to the season. There has been no drop off from his expectation every time he hits the ice, the energy level he plays with, the things he tries, the goals that he scores. Uh he he he looks like he did in the playoffs. He’s and has that same kind of energy every day. and we need that right now. He’s been really really important to us. We’ve got most of our, you know, our captains are out of the lineup and and none of these are weekend injuries. So, whole new group of guys has had to emerge and and we’re really thankful that we have them. Paul, objective five, what’s been your evaluation? I know it’s fourth line, not maybe getting most men, but just what have you seen from him? He’s going through what what you’d like those young guys to go through. We like his game. Um, every month of pro hockey, two things are going to happen. He’s going to get a little bit of faster and the game’s going to slow down a little bit more. So, the pro hockey for him in his first year is exactly that. It’s what Samo went through his first year. His reads are right. Um, he’s he’s you know that he hasn’t been on the video of any kind of egregious mental mistakes. Uh, he’ll just get better and better. I almost don’t assess them the first time through. Don’t get too excited about a young player, but certainly never get too too far down on a guy because we’ve got five or six guys in our lineup that are potentially Hall of Fame players, but certainly world class players now that in their first year just weren’t and they weren’t on anybody’s radar that they would be. So we we the character’s right. His preparation is right. His work ethic is outstanding. He’s smart. So we’ll get him as many games as we possibly can here with the injuries that we have. And then he’s going to get to keep that and and keep playing pro hockey. Any kind of update on that too? Feeling better, but not on the ice yet. But there won’t be a big turnaround time in my mind from the time he hits the ice till the time he’s ready to play. So he’s not coming off a knee injury or shoulder injury. There’s he’s limited in some of the conditioning things that he can do right now. Um but if I have to come in and play him 8 to 12 minutes the first few games to get him back, he’ll play as soon as as soon as he gets on the ice and he can move around, he feels fine, then he’s back in the lineup. all of Marson’s on pace for his most productive season at age 34 points wise. What did you notice about him maybe off the ice or just about his makeup that allows him to kind of fend off time? I think it’s always been there like he you go back to the thing that I remember most about Oliver is we would play, you know, you’d go into Arizona once or twice a year and we’d we’d say, “Well, you got to get this guy’s shot lane. You got to you got to block these shots, right?” And we just never could. And I know that the teams that played him couldn’t either because it’s on our video that he can sift that puck through, pull it across the line, and he’s so good at at getting a puck to where he wants to get it. And we we could just never get in that shot lane, right? He’s gifted at it. And uh that hasn’t changed. He plays with a a nasty edge. I don’t necessarily remember him having that in Phoenix. Did he develop that here or is that just something that Yeah, I I think that he I think you’ll see older defenseman do that, right? They get to a point they’re not going to take it anymore, right? They they get to an age where uh they’re going to put their stick up to protect themselves in that front and they’ve been in the league long enough. They know what they can get away with and what they can’t. We felt he did as the season went on for sure. Coach talked about with the condensed schedule just the significance of having a couple of practice days in a row, especially at home. Yeah. Feel like these past couple days have been We didn’t use them a we used them differently. So for us that the the practice part of our schedule practice, we don’t practice much here. We just we just haven’t for three years. Our our travel is different than most. We’re more like a northern western team than anybody else. Us in Tampa, we’re on the plane a whole heck of a lot. The condensed schedule just means you got to decide, you know, whether you’re looking for sharpness or you’re looking for for freshness. We’re actually haven’t been a an execution team. This the strength of our game hasn’t been our ability to sling a puck across through five sticks and put it on the tape. It’s not what we’re built to do. So, we haven’t practiced very much. So, we come into this break. We came off five and nine, but only one game. You know, we had a game outside our time zone. We’ll go heavy in the gym because we can control that with our injuries. It’s almost safer to push them in there and then get out and do 30 30 today as fast as we can. So today was just working just getting the puck up the ice. It looked like just some transition some transition speed which is a way of working what you want. It’s not that we’re trying to s it up out there for tomorrow. That would not be a good good game plan for us right now. Be fun for everybody except for Panther fans. Yeah. Or coaches audience. Yeah. Let’s really try to snap it around today. Anything else?

Florida Panthers coach Paul Maurice meets the media after his team’s practice in Fort Lauderdale on Monday, Dec. 1, 2025.

The Panthers play host to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Tuesday; Florida is coming off a 5-3 loss to the Calgary Flames.

Against Calgary, Florida led 2-0 early only to see the Flames score the next four goals — then add an empty-netter with 1:03 remaining for the comeback win.

Evan Rodrigues, Sam Bennett, and Brad Marchand each scored for Florida; Daniil Tarasov made 29 saves.

Florida has lost three straight at home.

Video Courtesy Florida Panthers / @FlaPanthers / Panthers Vision

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