FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — These were the last moments of last season for Paul Maurice, here in a room over the practice rink of the Florida Panthers new facility. His players were in the building ahead of Thursday’s first practice, the start of a purposely exhausting stretch of workouts by this coach — whether a Stanley Cup championship is part of their story or not.

Maurice was led back to last season by questions on the team’s media day Wednesday, back to talking about that Game 7 against Edmonton and the parade afterward. He discussed his “peaceful” summer off the grid at his Lake of the Woods cottage and of his day with the Stanley Cup after a wedding, with his full family there.

But he also mentioned taking a walk in early August, after about six weeks of peace, and how he turned to his wife and said, “All right, I’m ready to go back.”

It’s not last season anymore, he was saying Wednesday on the edge of training camp. Their summer of love is over. Maybe it ended for Maurice right then on that walk, just as it did for Matthew Tkachuk when he began working out while on a mid-July golf stop in Utah or for Sergei Bobrovsky when … well, he never really stopped.

“I’m excited to compete for the dream again,’’ Sergei Bobrovsky said.

To underline how they’ve moved on from the romance and memory of last spring, Maurice underlined how the players tested, “at or above their fitness level” from last September.

You never know how a championship changes teams. Heat coach Pat Riley suspended Antoine Walker and James Posey for being out of condition the season after the Heat’s 2006 title.

“There’s no — and we’ll start with this word right now — ‘hangover’ concept from last year,’’ Maurice said. “We don’t believe it.”

Sometimes that’s easier said than done, for everyone, but talking it out of existence is the first step. Only eight NHL teams have repeated championships, the last one being the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2021 and 2022.

South Florida has two repeat champions: The 1972 and 1973 Miami Dolphins and the Miami Heat of 2012 and 2013. There’s a link to the Panthers here. Each lost the championship round one year before a revenge tour that brought the title the next year. Can the Panthers now repeat their South Florida cousins’ repeat?

They aren’t ready to go there. Not yet. Tkachuk said they haven’t even had a team meeting yet, but his goal is the same as always.

“Just try and make the playoffs and see what happens,’’ he said.

They went to the final two years ago from the eighth seed and last year from the third seed. Hockey is a random enough story that seedings don’t matter as much as a team’s stars, styles and confidence does.

“The experience we’ve gained is, it’s honestly priceless,’’ Tkachuk said. “We feel we’re in a great spot with the returning guys that we know what it takes, how hard it is to get there. But we’ve done it.”

For some, the celebration ended early. General manager Bill Zito was calling players’ agents early the morning after beating Edmonton in Game 7. He kept the core of this team intact while adding necessary pieces.

Sam Reinhart and his 57 regular-season goals (and 10 in playoffs) was signed back. Veteran defenseman Nate Schmidt, who played for Maurice in Winnipeg, was added. The fourth line was reconstructed.

No one around the Panthers uses words like, “magic,” or “destiny,” in discussing last season. They talk, like Maurice did, about the nuts-and-bolts “process” of it all. That day-by-day building ended last year with a title. But he was just as content with their work the previous year when they fell short in the final against Vegas.

That’s sports, he was saying. Sometime the planets line up again and you have a result like last year. Sometimes they don’t. What they don’t want is this season after to feel like the morning after.

The process starts again with a different energy than trying to win one. Now they try for two.

“You want it more,” Maurice said.

Everyone will remember the spring of 2024 for the Panthers. How will they remember 2025?

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