The Florida Panthers are heading to the Stanley Cup Final, but it’s what happened after their series-clinching win that got people talking.
When the final buzzer sounded in Game 5, something was different about the traditional handshake line. The coaches weren’t there.
Panthers head coach Paul Maurice had a quick chat with Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour near the benches instead. It wasn’t a snub – it was actually planned.
“It’s a personal belief,” Maurice explained after the game. “The handshake line should be for the players who battled it out on the ice, not for guys in suits.”
The Panthers had just pulled off an impressive comeback, turning a 2-0 deficit into a 5-3 victory over Carolina to clinch their spot in the Finals.
But Maurice wanted to keep the spotlight on his players.
“Think about it – these guys blocked shots, fought for each other, and put everything on the line,” he said. “The last thing a Carolina player needs is to shake hands with 50 people in suits they don’t even know.”
He’s got a point. The ice was packed with nearly 400 people after the game – coaches, trainers, staff members, and more. But none of them took a hit or scored a goal.
Maurice isn’t alone in this thinking. He had similar conversations with Toronto’s Craig Berube earlier in the playoffs. Both Berube and Brind’Amour – former players themselves – got where he was coming from.
“I don’t know when coaches started joining the handshake line,” Maurice wondered. “When I first got into the league, you’d never think of doing that. Maybe some coach just wanted to get on camera, or shake Wayne Gretzky’s hand.”
The veteran coach sees something special in the player-only tradition.
“These guys go to war with each other on the ice – it’s nasty out there,” he said. “They’re not sending Christmas cards to each other. But watching them shake hands after? That’s something beautiful.”
The Panthers will now wait to see who they’ll face in their third straight Stanley Cup Final appearance.
