FORT LAUDERDALE — The Florida Panthers were a point out of the Stanley Cup playoffs on Jan. 2 when defenseman Seth Jones was injured at the Winter Classic in Miami.
Jones sustained a fractured collarbone after being struck by a deflected puck just over 4 minutes into the outdoor game at LoanDepot Park.
He has not played since.
The Panthers have not been the same, since.
Florida was 21-15-3 with 45 points going into the Winter Classic — one point back of the Buffalo Sabres for the final wild-card spot and five points behind Montreal for third in the Atlantic Division.
The Panthers have gone 11-14-0 since and come into tonight’s game against Jones’ former Columbus Blue Jackets 11 points behind the Boston Bruins with 18 games remaining.
Jones, of course, was not Florida’s first star player to go down to injury this season — and he was not the last.
Florida started the season knowing that Matthew Tkachuk would miss a big chunk of the season, so would Tomas Nosek.
Then captain Sasha Barkov went down on his first day of training camp needing reconstructive knee surgery.
Dmitry Kulikov, Cole Schwindt, Brad Marchand, Jonah Gadjovich, and others missed significant time as well.
But Jones’ injury seems to have marked the final direction of how this Florida Panthers season would go.
“The proverbial straw,’’ Paul Maurice said. “You take the dominant man up front — and, he and Niko Mikkola, at times, in the playoffs were the dominant pair — that seems to be the straw. There was there, then stacked on that was nine games in 15 days.’’
Jones, acquired from the Blackhawks in a blockbuster deal last March, is a very important piece to how the Panthers play.
That was apparent during the playoffs when he and Mikkola became a fantastic pair once Aaron Ekblad returned from suspensions and went back with Gus Forsling.
It certainly shows now that he has been out.
“When you look at our analytics after that,’’ Maurice said, “it was extreme over the bar, positive 5-on-5. That got narrowed down into a very thin band with only a couple of exceptions.”
The timing of the injury was not good for the Panthers — nor Jones.
Just a few days before the Winter Classic, he was named to Team USA for the Winter Olympics.
The injury obviously cost him a chance to not only play for his country on such a high level, but to also do so with Tkachuk, his old Columbus d-partner Zach Werenski, and other USA players he knew over the years.
Bill Zito said it was tough seeing Jones at the IcePlex after arriving home from Milan knowing how much it would have meant to him to play in that tournament.
“There’s no way to sugarcoat it, especially after all the things he has done,’’ Zito said last month. “You never know. [Life’s] funny. I’m sure the Seth Jones chapter is incomplete right now. There’s more to be written.’’
The Panthers may be without Uvis Balinskis tonight against the Blue Jackets, leaving them with five healthy defenseman after the Jeff Petry trade last week.
Toby Bjornfot may be coming back from Charlotte; we will know that later this morning.
Although Jones has been practicing with the Panthers and is out of noncontact garb, Maurice said he is still a bit away from coming back into the lineup.
“He had a little bit of a setback two weeks [ago] so that’s why he has been prolonged,’’ Maurice said. “We can’t bring him back to the start of it because it was reset. Everything got pushed back. He plays when the X-rays clear and his strength is there.
“It might be soon, but it might be another 7-10 days.’’
ON DECK: GAME No. 65
COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS at FLORIDA PANTHERS
