{"id":457093,"date":"2026-02-13T19:33:05","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T19:33:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/457093\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T19:33:05","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T19:33:05","slug":"finland-players-tried-to-replace-coach-with-paul-maurice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/457093\/","title":{"rendered":"Finland players tried to replace coach with Paul Maurice"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s no secret that Team Finland has not had a ton of success internationally<\/a> under head coach Antti Pennanen since he was hired in late 2023. Suomi failed to advance to the 4 Nations Face-Off championship game in North America last February, and were defeated in the quarterfinal of the 2025 IIHF World Championship a couple of months later.<\/p>\n

Now, there is a report out of the country that at least one player on the team was trying to replace Pennanen with Paul Maurice, who has led the NHL’s Florida Panthers<\/a> to back-to-back Stanley Cup championships.<\/p>\n

There are multiple star Finnish players who play for the Panthers, including captain Sasha Barkov (who is out recovering from knee surgery), Anton Lundell, Eetu Luostarinen and Niko Mikkola.<\/p>\n

The news was broken<\/a> by Sami Hoffren of Ilta-Sanomat on Friday morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to information received by the editorial team, NHL players’ experiences with Pennanen after the February tournament were so bad that there was a discussion among the players about getting new blood behind the bench,\u201d Hoffren wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to several reliable sources, Finland’s leading NHL players discussed and speculated over the summer about NHL champion coach Paul Maurice and the possibility of having him coach the Lions for the Olympics. The players discussed that Maurice, who led the Florida Panthers to two consecutive Stanley Cups, could become part of the Olympic coaching staff or even replace Pennanen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoffren reports that Maurice did not reject the idea, but that the Finnish Hockey Association did not \u201cpromote the matter.\u201d Ahead of the Olympics, the association\u00a0announced that Pennanen would continue in his position at least until the spring of 2027.<\/p>\n

Finnish coach Antti Pennanen unaware of rumors<\/p>\n

The 47-year-old Pennanen was asked about the rumors shortly after Finland defeated Sweden 4-1 in Group B play on Friday morning. He admitted to reporters at Milano Santagiulia Arena that he was unaware one of the players had approached national team general manager Jere Lehtinen and suggest Maurice replace him.<\/p>\n

Dallas Stars superstar and Finland alternate captain Mikko Rantanen was also asked about the situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cNever heard that. I didn\u2019t read any media before the game,\u201d Rantanen said. \u201cI think (Pennanen) is good. He gives us freedom to play offence, and he has some details he wants from us defensively. And I think today we played really good structure; he has a good structure. And if we play the way he wants, and defend well, he\u2019s fun to play for. He\u2019s a really good coach.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither Maurice nor the Finnish Hockey Association have commented on the matter.<\/p>\n

Finland is 1-1 after an upset loss to Slovakia,<\/a> followed by Friday’s win over Sweden. They’ll try to finish group play with a victory against host Italy on Saturday. The knockout round begins early next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s no secret that Team Finland has not had a ton of success internationally under head coach Antti…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5102],"tags":[62,57,5141,5,4,107,4303,2602,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-457093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida-panthers","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-panthers","10":"tag-floridapanthers","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-nhl-rumors","14":"tag-nhl-stories","15":"tag-olympics","16":"tag-panthers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116064996941322388","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}