Sam Reinhart<\/a>, who scored Florida\u2019s lone goal Friday. \u201cEveryone goes through it. We\u2019re no different. You\u2019ve got to have guys that are able to step in and fill roles and produce. That\u2019s what we\u2019re going to need.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a tough January. Everyone\u2019s going through it. It\u2019s a lot of games at this time of year for a lot of teams \u2026 So, this is going to be a big month for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Florida has 14 more games in January, beginning against the Colorado Avalanche, who lead the NHL with 67 points and have just two regulation losses (30-2-7), at home at Amerant Bank Arena on Sunday (5 p.m. ET; SCRIPPS, ALT, SN). The hope is Jones won\u2019t be out long, but Maurice noted that the Panthers will be at about 225 man-games missed because of injury when they hit their regular-season midway point with their 41st game on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, we\u2019re going to get some guys back, but we\u2019re probably going to lose some guys,\u201d Maurice said. \u201cThe further you get in, the threshold, I think, in the League is five guys (injured). If you have four or five guys out, you can look fairly close. \u2026 We\u2019ve been sitting at six all year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Panthers understand this is part of the challenge of trying to win the Cup in three consecutive seasons. There are reasons why no team has done it since the New York Islanders won the Cup in four straight seasons from 1980-1983.<\/p>\n
The Panthers have overcome a lot already to get to this point. They played 68 playoff games in reaching the Stanley Cup Final the past three seasons, losing to the Vegas Golden Knights in 2023 before defeating the Edmonton Oilers the past two seasons<\/p>\n
Getting back to the Cup Final again with the injuries they have will be their most difficult test.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what our story is this year. Can we overcome it?\u201d Maurice said. \u201cWe aren\u2019t going to look the same and people will probably attribute different things (such as), \u2018Well, they\u2019ve played a lot of hockey.\u2019 We had played a lot of hockey two years ago. So, that\u2019s not changing. Can we overcome our injuries? That\u2019s our challenge this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we can do it, if we can handle our adversity, we\u2019ve done our job.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The good news is there is some help on the way. Tkachuk, who had surgery on Aug. 22,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-388671","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388671","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=388671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}