As they come off Stanley Cup high, Panthers locked in as training camp begins

MIAMI — Paul Maurice knows what the Florida Panthers just accomplished will be brought up time and again this season.

It’s only natural.

The Panthers just won the Stanley Cup for the first time in franchise history. In just under three weeks, on Oct. 8, they’ll begin their quest to become just the ninth team in league history to repeat and first since the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2020 and 2021.

The celebration has taken place all summer and there are still a few final moments of reflection left to take place, most notably the ring ceremony and the banner raising on Opening Night when the Panthers host the Boston Bruins.

“All those good things that you get to enjoy,” Maurice said.

After that comes the challenge: Channeling the energy into what they do on the ice.

The outside noise will be there. The external expectations will be perfection and almost nothing less. Everything they do will be scrutinized.

But Maurice knows he has the team that can handle that.

The core group for his first two seasons — which went through the excruciating loss in the Stanley Cup Final to Vegas two years ago and the euphoria of winning Game 7 of the Cup Final against Edmonton in July — returns to uphold the standard and demands Maurice instills.

When training camp officially starts Thursday, the latest part of the journey begins.

“We’ll make very sure,” Maurice said, “that our day is completely focused on what we’re doing, not living in the past, and then, maybe more importantly, the ‘hangover idea,’ not living in the future.”

There’s a balance that goes with that, a toeing of the line that was needed as Florida navigated its summer. The team relished its opportunity to reflect on what it accomplished. Each player got his own day with the Stanley Cup, saw their name engraved on the trophy they have yearned to win their entire lives.

It’s hard to ignore the emotions that come with that.

It’s not hard, however, to know when it’s time to switch gears and focus on what’s next.

For star winger Matthew Tkachuk, for example, it came almost immediately after his day with the Cup in mid-July, a day that in addition to being with his hockey-centric family was spent going to his elementary school, the local fire and police departments, and the Anheuser Busch brewery, where one of the Clydesdale horses drank from the Cup.

“It was a blast,” Tkachuk said. “Right after that, you kind of turn the page and get ready for now.”

For Panthers captain and center Aleksander Barkov, the focus shifted once he left Florida to return to Finland about a week after the season ended. He basked in the big moments, including the rain-soaked parade that he never thought would come when he was drafted by Florida 11 years ago, and acknowledged that “pretty much one of the biggest dreams of my life” was achieved. And then he went back to work.

“That week was enough to celebrate,” Barkov said, “and obviously every day I’m really happy still thinking about it, and it’s gonna be on my mind forever that we’re Stanley Cup champions, but the hunger to achieve more is also there.”

Goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, who is known for his live-in-the-moment mentality, admitted that “it is challenging to keep yourself humble in the summer” after winning the Cup.

Why?

“Because there are so many people that try to bring the illusion around you and tell you how good you are and how great you are and stuff like that,” Bobrovsky said. “But it’s not reality. The reality is it’s just an illusion. It’s just words. At the end of the day, it was a great hockey game and it was a great series [against Edmonton] and could have gone any way. If it went not in our favor, we would be in a tough spot. ... To go into this season, into training camp, the biggest thing for us is to get together, start to build chemistry and work and help each other and support each other.”

This group has shown it can do just that. The team’s tight-knit nature was on display all throughout the playoff run. They were selfless in nature, focused more on the team’s success rather than any individual accolades.

Expect no different heading into this season.

The expectations for a repeat are there.

The desire to make it reality is even more palpable.

“We’ve come down the original high,” said forward Sam Reinhart, who signed an eight-year contract shortly after Florida won the Stanley Cup. “It’s something you work your whole life towards, so it’s always going to be there. It’s always going to be at the back of your head that you had that accomplishment, but we’re competitors. We’re eager to put ourselves in a position to win it again, and there’s a lot of little details that start now. They start officially on the ice [Thursday], so that you can’t overlook to put yourself in the best position at the end of the year to give yourself that opportunity.”

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