If you’re a Florida Panthers fan, if you waited a quarter-century for success like last season, you trust general manager Bill Zito pushed another right button and made another proper decision Thursday in introducing Paul Maurice as coach.
This wasn’t the easy or even the popular move for Zito. That would have been bringing back interim coach Andrew Brunette to build on last season. No one would have said a word, much less raised a question.
But Zito is trying to do what he’s done a lot over the past two years, which means to take someone other teams didn’t necessarily covet, maybe a name he sees as special, and make the perfect fit for the Panthers.
That’s the word he kept returning to in introducing Maurice.
“This was the man to be the real fit, just the right fit, to take us into the challenges moving forward and ultimately to our goal,’’ Zito said.
When you add it all up, that’s why Maurice is in and Brunette is out right now. Maurice has coached nearly three decades to Brunette’s one season. He says the first time he was fired, he turned to the man telling him, Carolina Hurricanes’ general manager Jim Rutherford, “Thank god, I’m tired. They need a new voice.”
He took a job in Russia for two years for one simple reason: “To learn,’’ he says.
He has an expression for playoff hockey, one his players will get to know. “You’ve got to get down in the mud,’’ he said.
So he’s 55 and been around the block a few times, even if the one question about him remains the one about the Panthers themselves: Can he win the Stanley Cup? He’s been to the Stanley Cup Final once and the conference finals twice.
He made the playoffs the previous four seasons before resigning in Winnipeg in January. He knows exactly what the Panthers discovered against Washington and especially Tampa Bay this spring, too.
“Everything changes in the playoffs,’’ he said. “You’ve got to get enough playoff experience to know the game changes and to accept that fact.”
He then says the reason he was Zito’s choice without saying it.
“If you haven’t built the game over the course of the regular season where you have to change your game — because playoff game is different — it’s too late,’’ he says. “You have to work on that style of game, and the Eastern Conference is a little more wide open, while the Western is more like that playoff hockey.”
The Panthers’ pretty play of the regular season didn’t translate to the playoffs. That will be Maurice’s challenge. The idea isn’t to throttle this high-scoring team as much as graduate it, help everyone, “make the smart play,’’ he said.
Zito has stocked the roster with good talent. Now he puts Maurice behind the bench in a move that defines both of them. The Panthers were hockey’s best team in the regular season. They played a fun and flashy style.
Brunette was a good part of that. He could have been allowed to grow with the team. Zito thought a change was needed. He’s made enough good moves to earn any benefit of the doubt.
There were other options. Pete DeBoer, a former Panthers coach, just signed with Dallas. Barry Trotz, the third-winningest coach in NHL history, seemed too much of a defensive-minded coach on an offensive-heavy roster. He wasn’t the right fit, in other words.
Maurice has watched talented teams lose badly in the playoffs before winning. This Tampa Bay team did. Maurice remembers Sidney Crosby’s Pittsburgh team before them.
“They’d lose and it was always the same phrase, ‘We had our chances,’ because it was an offense-only team,’’ he said.
Sound familiar?
“Then they figured it out and they won back-to-back [titles],’’ he said.
Zito bet on Maurice to help this team figure it out. It wasn’t the easy or popular move. Maybe next May, or even June, everyone will call it the right one.
