His uniform is coming along for the ride, too. Time will tell if it gets used.<\/p>\n
Tkachuk said Sunday that he has a soft target for what will be his debut game this season. He wouldn’t say what that target it, but since he’s going on the trip it’s reasonable to think that Tkachuk \u2014 who had surgery in August to repair a torn adductor and sports hernia \u2014 could be in the lineup sometime on this six-game swing.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery box that has had to be checked so far has been and I guess the last one before playing is taking off the no-contact jersey,\u201d Tkachuk said Sunday, after completing a workout while the Panthers were playing the Colorado\u00a0Avalanche, a game that Florida won 2-1. \u201cWe’ll have another few skates here and a couple calls and figure it out from there, but we\u2019re feeling pretty good right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tkachuk returned to practice with the team last week while wearing a yellow non-contact jersey. He had been skating on his own for at least a couple weeks before that, part of his ramp-up from the\u00a0surgery.<\/p>\n
Tkachuk has not played since\u00a0Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final, when the Panthers clinched their second consecutive title by again topping the Edmonton Oilers. He went through the summer trying to rehab, but eventually decided that he needed the surgery, knowing it would cost him the first few months of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe patience has been tested a lot,\u201d Tkachuk said. \u201cBut I guess it\u2019s kind of what I signed up for by making the decision last late February or early March by riding it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trip starts Tuesday in Toronto, and the six-game road swing \u2014 the Panthers will come home for a few off days along the way \u2014 also includes games at Montreal, Ottawa, Buffalo, Carolina and Washington.<\/p>\n
After the Panthers won their second straight Stanley Cup in June, Tkachuk revealed the severity of the injuries he sustained while playing for Team USA in the 4 Nations Face-Off in February. He missed the final 25 games of the regular season but returned for Game 1 of the Panthers\u2019 first-round series against the Tampa Bay Lightning.<\/p>\n
Tkachuk had 23 points \u2014 eight goals and 15 assists \u2014 in 23 playoff games, including seven points in the Stanley Cup Final. Winning the Cup, he said, made playing through the injuries more than worthwhile.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn’t change it for the world,\u201d Tkachuk said. \u201cLucky to have our team’s name on the Cup one more time.\u201d<\/p>\n
And his focus now is primarily on the Panthers, but he acknowledged that it’s hard not to already be thinking about the opportunity to wear USA Hockey’s colours again at the Milan Cortina Olympics taking place next month.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need every point we can right now, and I\u2019m a Florida Panther. That\u2019s my team right now,\u201d Tkachuk said. \u201cAnd for two and a half or three weeks, I\u2019ll be on another team. And I\u2019m not going to lie, I\u2019m pretty excited for that as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Panthers have been without a slew of key players all season, including captain Aleksander Barkov, defenseman Dmitry Kulikov and now defenseman Seth Jones \u2014 who was injured in the Winter Classic on Friday, out on Sunday against Colorado and Florida will get word on Monday about his timeline to return.<\/p>\n
Barkov \u2014 a \u201cfreak of nature,” Tkachuk said \u2014 tore his ACL in October, but is already doing some light skating and could return at some point this season. Tkachuk seems to be, at the most, a couple of weeks away. And he lauded teammates for keeping the Panthers in the playoff mix.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t look at it like they\u2019re treading water. I think they\u2019ve played some amazing hockey,\u201d Tkachuk said. \u201cI mean, it\u2019s hard to do with so many guys out of the lineup and the depth has been tested. And they have passed the test, I think. What they\u2019ve been able to do has been very impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"His uniform is coming along for the ride, too. Time will tell if it gets used. Tkachuk said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-393201","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\/393201","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=393201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}