Panthers sign HC Paul Maurice to a multi-year extension

The Florida Panthers have announced a multi-year contract extension for head coach Paul Maurice. The exact duration or terms of the contract haven’t yet been revealed.

Maurice has already stamped his place in Florida’s record books, joining the team ahead of the 2022-23 season and immediately leading the Panthers to their first Stanley Cup Final since 1996. They’d ultimately fall to a red-hot Vegas Golden Knights team, but Maurice one-upped the performance last season when he returned Florida to the Cup Final and trumped Edmonton in a seven-game series. 

For all of the efforts of Florida’s stars — namely Matthew Tkachuk, Aleksander Barkov and Sergei Bobrovsky — in the postseason runs, it was the full-team-effort driving Florida’s ship in both years. Players like Evan Rodrigues, Anton Lundell, Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Vladimir Tarasenko all found ways to step up at the perfect moments, speaking to Maurice’s ability to motivate his team from top-to-bottom.

Now in the early going of his third year with the club, Maurice has already become the third-winningest coach (98 wins) in Panthers history — behind Jacques Martin (110 wins) and Peter DeBoer (103 wins). Maurice has also won more playoff games (45) than any other Panthers coach. 

Interestingly, this multi-year extension will make Maurice the longest-tenured coach in Panthers history. Nine different coaches — including DeBoer, Martin, Joel Quenneville and Mike Keenan — have coached three seasons in Florida, but only Maurice has found the success needed to stick around longer.

Maurice’s success in the hockey world extends far beyond his time in Florida. He began his coaching career in 1987-88, when he served as a player/coach for the OHL’s Windsor Compuware Spitfires. That was his fourth year of OHL hockey — and while he only managed 40 points in 189 games as a player, he clearly found a fit behind the bench. 

He stuck around Windsor for two more years before supporting youth hockey in Detroit for six years — then taking his talents to the NHL’s Hartford Whalers bench in 1995-96. He started as an assistant coach, but was promoted to head coach less than a month into the season. 

Maurice took control of an absolutely loaded roster, led by Brendan Shanahan, Geoff Sanderson and Jeff Brown. He stuck with the team through their move to Carolina in 1997, and even stuck around long enough to watch over his modern day competition — current Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour and Buffalo Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams.

Maurice missed the playoffs in five of his eight years with the Whalers/Hurricanes — and not even a Finals appearance in 2002 was enough to protect him from being fired after a 8-12-10 start to the 2003-04 season. He took one season away — but returned as the AHL Toronto Marlies head coach in 2005-06, and returned to NHL coaching in 2006-07. 

He’s been leading top-tier benches ever since, with his journey taking him through a brief stint in Toronto, a return to Carolina, and even one year with the KHL’s Metallurg during the 2012 NHL lockout. 

Maurice returned from the vacation to Russia as the head coach of the Winnipeg Jets, where he’d spend the next nine seasons. He made the postseason in five of those campaigns, pulling Winnipeg from a middling role in the Central Division into playoff consistency that continues even today.

Including his 7-4-2 record to start this season, Maurice has accrued an incredibly 899-760-250 record across 28 seasons in the NHL. He ranks second in all-time games coached (1,909) behind all-time-great Scotty Bowman (2,141). Maurice would need to coach three more seasons to pass Bowman’s record. 

He’ll need to keep winning to catch up to other records — leading all active coaches in wins but ranked fourth in all-time wins (873) behind Bowman (1,244), Quenneville (969) and Barry Trotz (914).