His Florida Panthers had just lost, 2-1, in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Second Round on Wednesday and the coach was making Will Ferrell references -- to the basketball movie "Semi-Pro" -- and joking around with reporters.
He was not hanging his head. He was not bemoaning the loss. He was not, it seemed, worried that the Panthers hadn't closed out the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 4, an opportunity they had gotten courtesy of winning six straight games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs and each of the first three to start the series to take a 3-0 lead in the best-of-7 series.
He was light.
"We lost a game today," Maurice said. "That happens in the playoffs. I think to everybody so far. OK, we're good. We're OK. We get to play the next one. I think it wasn't so fabulous a win that they're not going to let us play the next one."
And that, it seems, is precisely the attitude he is planning on taking as the series shifts to Toronto for Game 5 on Friday (7 p.m. ET; TNT, CBC, TVAS, SN), with Florida now leading 3-1 in the series. It's not like anyone -- the Panthers included -- had anticipated that Florida, the second wild card in the East, was going to roll over the 50-win Maple Leafs. It's likely that exactly zero people had them sweeping this series.
As Maurice said, to the question of whether there's a concern with letting Toronto have some life, "The opposite part of that idea is you would expect a team with [111] points to have no life in a series, or if you just did what you could easily do that this would be four [games] and I wouldn't think that any of you had predicted that."
So then, what's a little levity in the face of a loss?
Especially a loss in which Florida played well, led by yet another rock of a performance by Sergei Bobrovsky, who made 23 saves on 25 shots, allowing two goals to Toronto for the fourth consecutive game.
Asked about how important it was that Bobrovsky hadn't faltered in the game, Maurice too had a quip, "It would have been better -- then we could just blame him."
And while the players weren't quite as comically inclined after the game, they weren't down.
They were unworried, even-keeled.
"We had a good game, I thought," Bobrovsky said. "We don't have to do anything different. We just have to keep playing our game, be patient. They are a good team. So, nobody said it's going to be easy. It is what it is. We're going back to Toronto and the series is going to go on."
The Panthers, of course, have experienced what happens when a seemingly down team sees a crack. That was them in the first round of the playoffs, when Boston Bruins forward Brad Marchand couldn't put away a last-second breakaway in Game 5, the game went to overtime, and a 3-1 series lead dissolved as Florida won Game 5, then Game 6, then Game 7.
But, having lost Game 4 to the Maple Leafs and rookie goalie Joseph Woll, the Panthers are hardly concerned about going the way of the Bruins.
About Woll too, Maurice had a crack.
"He's a rookie goalie, as you said," Maurice said. "We just kept talking about that before the game, wanted to make him feel comfortable in the League."
So yes, their confidence remains. Their belief in their ability to rebound remains.
"We've been living it for four months, one day at a time," said Sam Reinhart, who scored Florida's one goal, at 12:13 of the third period on the power play. "We had an opportunity to win a game tonight. We were close. They're a good team over there too. We've got another crack at it in a couple days."
They know they have a few things to correct -- they need to get back to their forecheck, they need to put more pressure on Woll, assuming he starts Game 5, they need to clean up their play through the neutral zone -- but there wasn't much to point to Wednesday night. It was a one-goal loss to one of the very best teams in the East.
"It's been going pretty good for us," Reinhart said. "Sometimes to lose a game like that, it's not the way you'd want it, but we were right there 'til the end.
