Panthers' Maurice rested, ready for first title defence

Paul Maurice spent his summer on a Canadian lake. Its location would be best described as in the middle of nowhere. He typically would have morning coffee with his wife, either on the dock or inside the screenedin porch, depending on how bad the black flies were that day. Sometimes it lasted 30 minutes. Sometimes it lasted for hours.

- TIM REYNOLDS

And he loved the quiet.

"It was just peaceful," he said.

Put simply, the coach of the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers, who spent 30 years chasing hockey's biggest prize, needed a long break. He needed to get away from practices and game plans, microphones and recorders. So he packed up the car not long after the Panthers' championship parade and made the three-day drive north, seeking solitude and quiet and a place to reflect and unwind.

He's back home now, rested and ready. His third season with the Panthers starts Thursday when training camp formally opens, with his eyes not looking back at the Cup that Florida just won but at how the team can try to win again.

"This is hyperbole, and it's egregious hyperbole," Maurice said. "If you sat here for 100 years to explain to me what winning the Stanley Cup is like, you could never have explained it to me. You can't know. But it's not what I thought it would be, either."