Lorentz on PTO: 'Being a Toronto Maple Leaf is something I've always wanted'

In the blink of an eye, Steven Lorentz has gone from hoisting the Stanley Cup with the Florida Panthers to taking a shot at joining the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Lorentz says the long playoff run last season didn’t give him much time to consider his future, but as a Kitchener, Ont., native, he saw a natural fit with the Maple Leafs and earlier this month accepted an invitation to training camp.

"I definitely had a lot of interest from other teams,” Lorentz told TSN 1050 on Monday.

“I was kind of looking around, just doing some reading on depth charts and coaches and stuff like that. Being a Toronto Maple Leaf is something I've always wanted to be since I was a little kid. For an opportunity like this to come up, I just thought that this is a group [where] I could come in and use what I learned last year in winning with Florida to hopefully bring that knowledge and that experience to a team like Toronto."

Lorentz, 28, who will see familiar faces in former Panthers defenceman Oliver Ekman-Larsson and goaltender Anthony Stolarz when camp begins this week, said he couldn’t put his finger on one particular thing that leads to a championship.

“The harder you work, the luckier you get,” Lorentz said. “That goes without saying, but there's going to be a lot of games you don't necessarily deserve to win or something's not going to go your way.

“It's about being resilient. You can sit there and say, ‘poor me’, or you can blame it on this or that, or you can just put your head back down and get back to work because no one's really going to feel bad for you.”

Lorentz was selected in the seventh round of the 2015 draft by the Carolina Hurricanes and made his professional debut with the club during the 2020-21 season.

The 6-foot-4 centre posted a career-best 10 goals and nine assists in 80 games with the San Jose Sharks in 2022-23.

Lorentz tallied one goal and an assist in 16 playoff games during the Stanley Cup run and had one goal and two helpers in 38 regular-season games with Florida.

Winning the Stanley Cup was an experience of a lifetime for Lorentz that goes beyond raising the trophy.

"Those are the memories that you look back on 50, 60 years from now,” Lorentz said. “Winning the Cup was obviously fantastic. I'm definitely not putting that down, but it's the stories and the memories you create on the journey to winning the Stanley Cup that are arguably just as important as lifting the trophy itself, because you can't do this alone."

Lorentz believes the Maple Leafs have what it takes to make a deep playoff run and create more lasting memories.

"It takes a full team effort and that's what it's going to have to take this year if Toronto wants to do it too,” said Lorentz. “I've looked at this group and I believe this group can get the job done, and what a cool experience that would be to do it in Toronto."