The Florida Panthers are back.
Fresh off the first Stanley Cup championship in franchise history, the Panthers kicked off their 2024 Training Camp on Thursday morning in Fort Lauderdale.
The Baptist Health IcePlex opened in December, so this marks the inaugural Panthers Training Camp at their new facility.
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While the setting may have been different, there was a lot of familiarity during Thursday’s sessions.
The team was split in half, with a pair of 90-minute practice sessions featuring the same drills and timing.
That’s because Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice has kept the first week of camp exactly the same during his first two seasons at the helm, and year three will be no different.
“Our first four practice days will be exactly the same practices we’ve run the last two years,” Maurice said Thursday.
Players were run through high energy drills that had them going full speed and pushing hard against one another.
There is clearly no element of easing into things at a Maurice-run camp in South Florida, but there is a method to his madness.
“They will be focused on the four major defensive systems that we run, and in order to do that, they’re going to be really hard,” he said. “That’s the whole point of it.”
The camps may be extremely difficult, challenging and exhausting, but Florida’s players are jumping back into camp headfirst with big ol’ smiles on their faces.
That’s because these Cats know the harder they work, the better the results.
“It was a pretty tough start, but that’s what we like,” said Panthers forward Eetu Luostarinen.
The past two seasons, the Panthers have earned themselves a reputation as a team that is not fun to play against.
They will out-work you, out-hit you and on more nights than not, outscore you.
It’s playoff hockey, but year-round.
Last season, the Panthers proved that you can absolutely push as hard as they did for as long as they did and still have enough left in the tank to survive the playoffs and win the Stanley Cup.
Now they’ll try to do it again, and with some fresh blood in the lineup following the usual, inevitable offseason turnover.
“The hunger is still there, that’s why I joined the group,” said Panthers forward Tomas Nosek. “I know it’s a tight group, and an experienced group as well. They’ve proven it the last three years. They won the Presidents’ Trophy, they went to the Finals, and they won it all, so I don’t think there’s a…