season-ending 8-1 win against the Detroit Red Wings<\/a>, the Panthers had 541 man-games lost to injuries with the list growing to 15 regulars.<\/p>\nAll are expected to be fully healed up by the time September rolls around.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing to be one hell of a training camp,\u201d Paul Maurice said with a grin. <\/p>\n
Barkov missed all 82; Jonah Gadjovich ended up missing 72. Leading scorers Brad Marchand and Sam Reinhart missed 19 and 17 respectively. <\/p>\n
\u201dThis was not the year anyone on our team wanted,\u2019\u2019 said Tkachuk, who returned Wednesday after missing four games while on paternity leave. His season total was 51 games missed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a whole lot we can learn from this year to try and make us better. Definitely a down year for everyone. It sucks, but it can motivate us to come back stronger next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Panthers wrapped up what has been a spectacular four-year run which by no means was spoiled by the season that just ended. <\/p>\n
In 2022, the Panthers won the NHL Presidents\u2019 Trophy with a franchise-record for points (122), goals (340), score differential (plus-94), and more. <\/p>\n
But that team, which won the franchise\u2019s first playoff series since 1996, was knocked out in a second round sweep to the Lightning and changes came swiftly. <\/p>\n
Andrew Brunette, who replaced Joel Quenneville eight games into the season, was let go with Bill Zito hiring Maurice. <\/p>\n
Although the start was rocky, the Panthers snuck into the 2023 playoffs as the No. 8 seed in the East and upset that year\u2019s Presidents\u2019 Trophy winners in Boston. <\/p>\n
Florida went on the first of three straight runs to the Stanley Cup Final \u2014 capped with wins over the past two summers. <\/p>\n
This will be Florida\u2019s first really long summer since it last failed to make the playoffs in 2019. That was the offseason that brought Quenneville and Sergei Bobrovsky to South Florida and sort of got this whole thing rolling. <\/p>\n
Zito, who took over for Dale Tallon in 2020 in the midst of a global pandemic, reworked the roster on the fly, bringing in such players as Tkachuk, Reinhart, Marchand, Seth Jones, Carter Verhaeghe, Sam Bennett, and more over the years.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a long summer and no one in this locker room likes long summers,\u2019\u2019 Tkachuk said Wednesday night. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be weird. We have to get some rest, whatever guys have been dealing with, get healed up and get after the summer. We have one goal next year: Making the playoffs. Then, we go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
As far as the future goes, we do not know whether Bobrovsky will return. He is Florida\u2019s highest-profile free agent and perhaps he moves on. <\/p>\n
And, he may just return. <\/p>\n
Regardless, Florida has the core of its team locked down with 10 players signed through at lead 2030. <\/p>\n
The expectation was Bobrovsky would be No. 11 but, again, we\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n
This team was built to win the Stanley Cup for the next couple of years and, again, that doesn\u2019t change based on what happened in this one. <\/p>\n
The Panthers plan on this simply being a blip on the radar. <\/p>\n
On to next season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not invincible,\u201d Tkachuk said. \u201cWe have dealt with some crazy things this year. But just because we won the last two, it does not mean we\u2019re going to come in here and ease our way into the playoffs. The hardest part, I\u2019ve learned, is making the playoffs. Once you get in, anything can happen. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to have a great summer, come back ready to roll next year. Guys are going to be back healthy, and I think we have a really, really, really good team here. We should come back ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
ON DECK: FLORIDA PANTHERS\u00a0OFFSEASON<\/p>\n
NHL Draft Lottery:\u00a0May 5; Secaucus, NJ<\/p>\n
NHL Draft:\u00a0June 26-27; KeyBank Center, Buffalo<\/a><\/p>\nNHL Free Agency:\u00a0Opens July 1<\/p>\n
Panthers Development Camp:\u00a0Late June\/Early July; IcePlex, Fort Lauderdale<\/p>\n
Panthers Rookie Camp\/Tournament:\u00a0Late August\/Early Sept.; Site TBA<\/p>\n
Panthers Training Camp:\u00a0Early\/Mid September; Fort Lauderdale\u00a0<\/p>\n
2026-27 NHL Season Opens:\u00a0Late September; Site, Opponent TBA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SUNRISE \u2014 The Florida Panthers did not expect this season to go the way it did. When training…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29,16995,53656,53655,104561],"class_list":{"0":"post-234139","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-headlines","10":"tag-florida-news","11":"tag-florida-panthers","12":"tag-matthew-tkachuk","13":"tag-paul-maurice","14":"tag-stanley-cup-champions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}