The 36 or so hours since the Florida Panthers lost the 2023 Stanley Cup Final to the Golden Knights could only ease the pain so much. There are still moments — quite a few each day since the Panthers lost Game 5 on Tuesday — when the realization will hit Paul Maurice and he’ll be miffed all over again, maybe blurt out an expletive and then get back to whatever he was doing, and the coach knows he’s not the only one.
Florida got so tantalizingly close to hoisting its first Stanley Cup and now has to wait another year for another shot.
“We had a fantastic experience and that definitely helps, but it could also be challenging,” star goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky said. “The next season, it starts from zero.”
