Florida Panthers’ Stanley Cup-winning coach Paul Maurice hasn’t forgotten his Canes days

The name on the building may have changed — multiple times — but the memories have not.

Not for Paul Maurice.

Maurice was the Carolina Hurricanes’ coach when the team’s new arena in Raleigh was being built in the late 1990s. The Canes were playing in Greensboro during construction, but the coaches and players checked in from time to time with site visits, putting on hard hats for an inspection as the steel girders were going up.

Maurice made his latest visit to the arena this past week, coaching the Florida Panthers in a preseason game. In the 25 years since the arena opened, he has taken the Canes to a Stanley Cup final, and is now a Stanley Cup-winning coach with the Panthers.

“When we first moved to North Carolina, this was just a big red hole in the ground,” Maurice said Friday.

And now, 25 years later? What was once the Raleigh Entertainment & Sports Arena was renamed the RBC Center, then PNC Arena and now Lenovo Center. It’s due to get a $300 million renovation.

“Still, and I always say this, what gets me is the trees,” Maurice said. “Because when we first got here, they were shrubs. Now, it’s like there is a canopy out there. Everything is full grown and that’s how I measure how long it’s been.

“It’s the trees. There was nothing here then.”

Hockey was something of novelty when the Hartford Whalers, coached by Maurice, moved to North Carolina in 1997. Raleigh had the IceCaps, but that was a minor league team playing in Dorton Arena.

The Hurricanes have since won a Stanley Cup. They’ve become a big part of the sports fabric of the Triangle and the state — the only major league team to have won a championship.

Maurice moved down with the team, took the Canes to the Cup final in 2002, was fired, rehired and later fired again. He spent a year in Russia. He took a sabbatical from coaching during the pandemic, then went to Florida.

All these years later, he’s the winningest active coach in the NHL and fourth all time in wins with 869, trailing Scotty Bowman, Joel Quenneville and Barry Trotz.

The one thing missing in his career was his name on the Stanley Cup — that special place in NHL history. He coached the Panthers to the Cup final in 2023, beating the Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference Final, then won it this past season.

The Panthers had a 3-0 lead over the Edmonton Oilers in the Cup final, only to have it go to a Game 7. Florida emerged with a 2-1 victory, allowing Maurice, at 57, to finally lift the big trophy over his head, giving it a long gaze.

“It was the complete lack of pain and some nice, quiet joy,” Maurice said of the moment. “I just wanted to feel it. Not the weight of it, but the experience of it.”

Asked to describe the past few months since that night, Maurice said, “Peaceful.”

“It was a whole lot of fun for about seven days and free agency was on (July 1) and then we left and I had probably six or seven weeks of peace at the lake,” he added. “It was the longest I’ve ever stayed away from coming back to work. And I enjoyed every day of it.”

“It was a first for me. This job gives you no peace.”

Not when you reach the Stanley Cup Final and leave without the Cup. In 2002, the Hurricanes faced a Detroit Red Wings team coached by Bowman and loaded with future Hall of Famers. In 2023, after sweeping the Canes, the Panthers were beaten out in five games by the Vegas Golden Knights.

“In the two years we went to the Final, the one here (with Carolina) and then last year, there was nothing left,” Maurice said. “There was nothing more there for the players to give. You had an understanding of that, but you still carried with that, with all of those things, that when you get to the Final you’ve still got a chance.

“You’re right there but it doesn’t happen. So there’s some pain that goes with it.”

And then he held up the Cup in victory — all 34 pounds of it.

“That was the start of new experiences,” Maurice said. “You can’t explain it to someone until it happens to you. And when it does, it’s not like I thought it would be at all.

“It’s just a wonderful feeling of sharing. I guess the idea is that every single person that loves you in this world is happy at the same time.”

Everyone gets a “day” with the Cup but Maurice joked his was something of an exception.

“It was my wife’s day,” he said, smiling. “She’s been married to (me) for 30 years, so she deserved it.”

Before long, it was back to work, back to prepare another season. There’s a banner to hang in Amarant Bank Center in Sunrise, Florida. The Panthers again should be among the best in the Eastern Conference and the NHL.

Maurice brought an inexperienced team into the Lenovo Center for the preseason game and took an 8-2 beating from a Canes team that had a lineup of veterans.

“No one is getting a 10-year contract out of this one,” he quipped. summing it up in Maurice fashion.