Dave Hyde: Panthers' culture shows how sports should feel at their best

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Paul Maurice, a master of the spoken word, chose an uncommon word for a coach recently about his job: Joy.

As in delight.

As in sheer happiness

Have you heard a coach use that word around a pro sports team? Ever? But doesn’t it reflect what the Florida Panthers have built when held up against words slung by the other team leaders in town?

“This has been a wholly and completely unexpected level of joy I find in my job because of the men around here,’’ the Panthers coach said. “I was asked today for a memory — it’s this group. It’s the fun that we’ve had.

“They work hard. I’m not pulling teeth here to get these guys to work hard or play hard, and that makes life really easy.”

Maurice was later asked about this joy, and he repeated how it’s not just from the players or a the byproduct of winning. It’s from the full work atmosphere inside the Panthers — the medical staff, the trainers, the communications people …

“I got a text from Marty Robins, our dentist, who’s upset,” Maurice said. “I think I said, ‘if we’re pulling teeth,’ but that’s his job. We got a dentist for that.”

A small joke. But it’s all a window into a larger, equally rare story that a 58-year-old coach is telling you: This is how it looks and feels, folks.

Culture. Atmosphere. Work environment. Choose your label. This is how it looks and feels when you have the right people assembled at the right time in any team or business.

This doesn’t mean the Panthers repeat as Stanley Cup champs — or even make it out of the first round against Tampa Bay. But to have a chance to win on a large scale — and that’s what the Panthers are about again this spring — all sides of an organization have to be aligned like this in any sport.

Terron Armstead, the recently retired Dolphins tackle, said last season how “You have to get 100 things right inside an organization to win or you never will.” One missing, fundamental component was Dolphins players being late for meetings, he said. “That affects more,” he said.

The Heat’s top player the previous several years, Jimmy Butler, got into a nasty contract dispute that dominated this season and forced a trade. You can win with issues, as the Heat did with Butler in previous years. But to have aligned feelings inside a team like the Panthers? To have joy?

It’s not hockey’s humble way to sell “Panthers Culture” T-shirts. But the finished culture is sports at its best. It started with general manager Bill Zito finding discounted talent around the league from Sam Reinhart to Sam Bennett to Gustav Forsling to Niko Mikkola — just go down the roster at his uncovered gold.

“And they’re good people,’’ Zito repeats at every telling.

Which means little unless you work with them day after day. Maurice related, “one of the most impactful things,” that told this was after the Panthers landed from a 5 1/2-hour flight from Edmonton to Fort Lauderdale after losing Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final.

Their season was teetering. The players were “at the height of anger, frustration, depression,’’ Maurice said. But it was the final flight of the year, and manners are manners.

“Every guy stopped and thanked the flight attendants for the year,’’ Maurice said. “They had the awareness for the people, the care they took for the players. Every one of them stopped to say, ‘Thank you.’ ”

If Zito found good players who are good people, Maurice’s system then assembled them into a championship team. He repeatedly says how “I don’t need to say much,” after a game, or “The players lead this team,” in the manner most championship teams do.

Reaching that point involved something more. They needed the right structure in a dynamic system that Maurice brought. It helped all these good players stuck in bad organizations to thrive as Panthers.

“What gives a player a chance to be really good here is that we’ve got about four or five things that you have to do, and that’s true of (Aleksander) Barkov on down,’’ he said. “Everybody has to do those things almost the exact same way. They’re equals in that.

“And then outside of that, we don’t want you to be like every other player. We appreciate that kind of uniqueness, and the diversity of talent that we have. Performance is the foundation of it all, but having as many different personalities and then each guy being themselves (is important).”

Reinhart remembers leaving a troubled Buffalo organization a few years ago and stepping into an “infectious environment” with the Panthers.

“When I got here, my first training camp, I saw the overall competitiveness the guys had, and that’s infectious,’’ he said. “It makes first-line guys better, it makes everyone better.”

A good system helped good players who previously struggled with the Panthers, too. Goalie Sergei Bobrovsky was benched in the playoffs and on the verge of having his contract bought out when Maurice arrived. With a better defensive system in front of him, “I got more confidence,” as he once said. His changed play led the Panthers to the championship last spring.

Maybe the fun is a byproduct of all the winning. Or maybe the winning is a byproduct of the culture this team has created.

The Panthers were a lost franchise for decades. But on the edge of another playoffs, stop for a moment and consider what they’ve created.

This is how it looks and feels when everything aligns inside an organization from a star like Barkov to a dentist like Robins. That’s created a surprise emotion for a 58-year-old coach in his 27th NHL season:

Joy.