FORT LAUDERDALE \u2013 The Florida Panthers are no strangers to adversity.<\/p>\n
But this latest test is tougher than most.<\/p>\n
The beating heart of the back-to-back Stanley Cup champions, captain Aleksander Barkov underwent surgery to repair a knee injury, head coach Paul Maurice announced on Friday.<\/p>\n
At the time of this writing, there\u2019s still no full timetable for his recovery.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no hiding it – that\u2019s the big man,\u201d Maurice said. \u201cHe\u2019s such an important place in that locker room. What we\u2019re going to get to experience now is you\u2019ll get to know some of the other leaders that we have in our room. We\u2019ll get to see other players. At the end of the day, I know there\u2019s the idea of next man up, I get all that, but there\u2019s not a next man for his skates.\u201d<\/p>\n
The injury occurred on Thursday during the first full day of training camp for Florida\u2019s veterans, who\u2019d been given an extra week to prepare and go through their own individual routines following three straight shortened summers.<\/p>\n
After a minor collision during a drill, Barkov\u2019s right leg bent awkwardly as he fell to the ice. He was eventually helped to the locker room by a pair of trainers, putting little weight on the leg in question.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeeing one of your friends go down, it sucks,\u201d teammate Carter Verhaeghe said.<\/p>\n
Preparing for his 13th NHL season, Barkov, who the Panthers drafted with the second-overall pick in 2013, stands as the franchise\u2019s all-time leader in essentially every major category, including goals (286), assists (496), points (782) and games played (804).<\/p>\n
Widely considered the best two-way player currently in the NHL, Barkov is a three-time winner of the Selke Trophy, which is given annually to the league\u2019s best defensive forward. Winning his first Selke in 2021, he\u2019s taken home the award each of the last two seasons.<\/p>\n
After becoming the first Finnish-born player to captain a team to the Stanley Cup in 2023, Barkov became the first European to captain a team to multiple Stanley Cups in 2024. Over those back-to-back Cup runs, he\u2019s tied for second on Florida in scoring with 44 points (18G, 26A).<\/p>\n
As Maurice said, you can\u2019t replace that type of player.<\/p>\n
Still, the Panthers know they have the talent and experience to press on.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou never want to see anybody get hurt, especially Barky on the first day, the first practice of camp,\u201d said teammate Anton Lundell, who\u2019s expected to see an elevated role in Barkov\u2019s absence. \u201cThe mood was a little bit down, for sure, yesterday. We all texted Barky. I talked to him, and he\u2019s doing alright. That\u2019s all we know. We hope it\u2019s going to be a quick recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to Barkov, the Panthers will also begin their quest for a third straight Stanley Cup without Matthew Tkachuk and Tomas Nosek. Tkachuk, who underwent surgery in August to repair a torn adductor muscle and sports hernia, is expected to be sidelined until sometime in December, while Nosek (lower body) is considered month-to-month.<\/p>\n
But even with key pieces out of action, the Panthers are built to weather any storm.<\/p>\n
“We have a lot of leaders in the room,\u201d Lundell said. \u201cIt’s not going to be quiet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stay tuned for more updates on Barkov\u2019s status.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT LAUDERDALE \u2013 The Florida Panthers are no strangers to adversity. But this latest test is tougher than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-170943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}