Panthers players 'taking ownership of the room' during playoffs

SUNRISE, Fla. -- By now, everyone has likely seen the clip.

It was March 29 in Toronto. The Panthers were trailing 2-1 and had come out noticeably flat to start the second period. Having already lost the previous four games, head coach Paul Maurice decided in that moment that he'd seen enough and went a now-famous tirade on the bench.

Well, whatever he said worked.

After coming back to defeat the Maple Leafs by a score of 3-2 in overtime in that contest, the Panthers went on to finish the season on a 6-1-1 run to just sneak into the playoffs by just one point.

After that? Oh, just your run-of-the-mill takedown of the historic 65-win Bruins in Round 1.

When asked about how good teams become great teams, Maurice, drawing on more than two decades of experience behind the bench in the NHL, said that a key change occurs when messages no longer have to be delivered to players, but rather the players become the ones to deliver the messages.

Much to his delight, Maurice hasn't had to say much since his eruption in Toronto.

"It gets to the point at some point in the season where the players run the room," Maurice said. "It gets to the point where the coach becomes smaller and smaller in importance as you go."

The farther you go, the bigger the games also get.

With the Panthers holding a commanding 3-0 series lead against the Maple Leafs -- the same team they serendipitously beat to kickstart their late-season surge -- heading into Game 4 of Round 2 in Sunrise on Wednesday, players agree that the bench has certainly evolved over the last several weeks.

When adversity arises, players are now policing themselves more than ever. They hold each other to a high standard, and there is a strong sense of mutual respect in the locker room. After months and months of learning their new system, execution has simply become second nature.

Taking Maurice's blueprint, players have picked up their own tools and started to build.

"We all know how we need to play," said forward Matthew Tkachuk, who leads the Panthers in playoff scoring with 15 points (five goals, 10 assists). "We all know what our expectations are from each other, and we all expect a lot from each other. If there's things that we say, there's no problem with guys going up to each other and saying it. Not in a bad way, just what they see. I think that's a very important thing, maybe something we didn't do earlier on in the year.

"We all know how we need to play. It's just about going out there and doing it and doing it for the whole game. Just enjoying it. We've never been tense. We've never been nervous or anything like that. We're just having a ton of fun right now. That's how it's got to be. The two opponents that we've played, Boston and Toronto, are two of the top teams in the league. This is a great stage to be on and we just have to go out there and enjoy it."

While you'd be hard-pressed to find a more eloquent and insightful coach in the NHL, Maurice also doesn't feel the need to resort to pre-game speeches in the playoffs, even when he has the Panthers on the cusp of advancing to the Eastern Conference Final for the first time since 1996.

The moment pre-game meetings end, the locker room belongs to the players.

"Six minutes before [the game] I'm not in there firing them up," Maurice said. "It's not my room anymore. The players run the room. They get themselves ready to play. They handle themselves on the bench. Yeah, I've got stuff I've got to do. I've got a job. But all the really funny stuff that goes on, all of the good stuff on those runs, the players take over the emotional depth of the room."

That being said, the coaches have their own fun.

"We've got our own room, and we're funny as hell back there," Maurice smiled.

At this point, fun is what the Panthers are all about.

Thriving as the underdogs against the top teams in the Eastern Conference, players have somehow found a way to stay carefree during typically the most-stressful time of the year. A big part of that is their belief in the system that Maurice has implemented. Stressing "playoff hockey" from the moment training camp started, those words are now personified in their hard-nosed play.

No matter the situation -- trailing or leading -- they're playing the exact same way every game. Having won a franchise-record six straight games -- a streak that started when they were staring down a 3-1 series deficit in Round 1 against the Presidents' Trophy-winning Bruins -- they've built of a certain level of belief and comfort in their approach in the playoffs.

It's another reason that so much doesn't need to be said right now.

Every player knows what they have to do, so it's their play that will do the talking.

After being chewed out in March, the Panthers are only hearing cheers now.

"We have a very serious team where guys want to do well, but in a tie game late in the third, we're enjoying it on the bench, laughing, smiling, looking around at the moment that we're in," Tkachuk said. "We're really, really enjoying it and having so much fun. … It's very fun. It's a very fun environment. We just have to do everything we can to prepare ourselves, come in on each game day and go out there and try to win a game."