Maurice: Panthers were 'horseshit' in shutout loss to Jets
Paul Maurice likened his team's performance Friday night to animal excrement.
"We were horseshit," the Florida Panthers head coach said following a 3-0 defeat to the Winnipeg Jets, according to The Associated Press' Colby Guy.
"We did some strange things tonight," Maurice added, according to Jameson Olive of the club's official website. "We had some breakaways that we passed off and open plays that we decided not to hit. The positive is that when your whole group is that bad, it's fixable. It's not something systemic that we've seen for a long time."
On the surface, the game may not have seemed lopsided. The Jets only scored twice on a goaltender, adding an empty-netter with under four minutes remaining. The Panthers fired the same number of shots on goal as the Jets (32), outshooting Winnipeg 12-11 in the second period and 14-13 in the third. The Cats also won 58.3% of the faceoffs and forced the Jets to block 22 shots compared to the nine Florida prevented from getting on goal.
But the victors controlled 53.06% of the expected goals at five-on-five, according to Natural Stat Trick, as Connor Hellebuyck notched his first shutout of the season.
The Jets, whom Maurice guided for nine seasons prior to his Panthers tenure, improved to 4-0-0 against their former bench boss since his arrival in Florida before the start of last season. Maurice resigned as Winnipeg's head coach in December 2021.
Maurice appears to be fond of using such descriptive language to illustrate his team's performance. While behind the Jets' bench in February 2019, he said, "We were all horseshit tonight" following a 5-2 loss to the Montreal Canadiens.
About two years later, he used the H-word twice in one postgame scrum. He defended then-Winnipeg captain Blake Wheeler by saying, "He got put in a real tough spot by a horseshit backcheck by somebody else," then took a jab at the media by stating, "You'll do your deep dives and analytics, and god, they do a horseshit job of telling you what five guys do."
The 56-year-old began his NHL head coaching career with the Hartford Whalers in 1995-96.