Paul Maurice says some Panthers could be 'in jail' before puck drop with one lineup move

Every Florida fan spent the summer drawing up the same fantasy line on a napkin.

Put Matthew Tkachuk, Brady Tkachuk and Sam Bennett together and just watch the chaos unfold.

Paul Maurice heard every bit of that noise walking into media day on Wednesday in Fort Lauderdale, and he shut it down with one of the funniest lines of the offseason.

Maurice was blunt about it. He doesn't want to give people what they want by stacking the two Tkachuk brothers with Bennett on one unit.

His reasoning had nothing to do with skill and everything to do with penalty minutes.

All three players have sat inside the league's top 20 in PIM since the 2022-23 season, and Brady even dropped the gloves with Bennett at the 4 Nations Face-Off while Bennett was repping Canada.

Maurice's exact quote is worth seeing for yourself.

Instead, the plan trending out of camp has Brady skating with Sasha Barkov and Sam Reinhart to start the year, keeping him away from older brother Matthew during regular shifts.

The Panthers open the preseason on September 20 at home against the defending champion Carolina Hurricanes, with a home and home to follow.

Maurice, who is closing in on 1,000 career wins, still has one of the deepest forward groups of his tenure to work with even without the dream trio together.

Fans will keep drawing up that line anyway.

Maurice just isn't ready to bail anybody out on bench minor duty in October.

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