Rangers’ connections to Panthers run deep — and plenty

NHL

By Ethan Sears

The most obvious tie that binds the Rangers and Panthers might be the one between two men who, Paul Maurice admits, aren’t particularly close.

But when Maurice was fired as head coach of the Hurricanes in 2004, he left a note for his successor, Peter Laviolette, on the board.

And when Laviolette — after winning the 2006 Stanley Cup in Carolina — was fired and replaced by Maurice in 2009, he returned the favor.

“Cause it was a good bunch of guys,” Maurice said Monday, ahead of the first playoff meeting between the two since the 2018 second round, when his Jets beat Laviolette’s Predators. “Somebody took a picture of it and made it out.”

It’s normal that a pair of teams will have some connections, because that’s how it works when everyone operates in the same world.

But the two that will commence the Eastern Conference Final starting Wednesday at Madison Square Garden have so many it’s hard to keep track.

That Jets team Maurice coached? The captain was Blake Wheeler and one of the top defensemen was Jacob Trouba. Jack Roslovic was there, too, as a young call-up.

“I think he’s a pretty good communicator, you kinda know where you stand at all times with him,” Trouba said of Maurice on Monday. “How he coaches is pretty straightforward. You either do it correctly or not, he’s pretty blunt about that. I think he understands players and where they’re at or what they’re going through and he’s got a certain way to sometimes deflect from it. Sometimes pat you on the back, pick you up. He’s got a good read on what a player needs to what at certain times.”

“I’m hoping he plays,” Maurice said of Wheeler, who is trying to return from a gruesome right leg injury suffered in February. “He’s a hardworking man and that injury, to come back from it, to be good, he would’ve done everything he possibly can to get back.”

Laviolette’s next job after losing the gig in Carolina was in Philadelphia.

The goalie there, starting in 2010, just happened to be a young Sergei Bobrovsky.

And when Bobrovsky made his next career stop in Columbus, he would later connect with Artemi Panarin — the two becoming close enough friends to party on a boat in Capri, Italy when they signed contracts with their current teams in July 2019.

“He was a great goaltender, he worked on his game constantly,” Laviolette said of Bobrovsky. “A tireless worker, really good person. I’ve watched him because I had him as a young player in Philly, I watched him grow over the years he had in Columbus and down in Florida, proving to be a top goaltender in the league.”

Two of the players the Rangers added at the trade deadline last season, Vladimir Tarasenko and Nikko Mikkola, now play for the Panthers.

Vincent Trocheck, who has 14 points in 10 playoff games this postseason, played the first seven seasons of his career in Sunrise, Fla.

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The web of connections between these teams sprawls out like a city map.

Michael Peca, whose presence as an assistant coach for the Rangers has made a humongous difference in the faceoff circle?

“I had him in Toronto,” said Maurice, who indeed coached Peca in 2006-07, when he played for the Maple Leafs.

Once the games start, it’ll all look the same and animosity will flare, even between friends. Maurice, loquacious even under the playoff lights, put it all into good context.

“I don’t think it affects you even a bit,” the Panthers coach said. “You don’t think about it. That puck drops and that is so far from something you can consider. You’re not laying off hits on a guy. You go as hard as you can, as fast as you can, you get off the ice.

“I think it’s great stories on the way in. I think it makes for a good handshake line. But I don’t think it affects the series at all.”