The Panthers enter Saturday\u2019s showdown on a three-game losing streak with defeats to the Philadelphia Flyers, Detroit Red Wings and New Jersey Devils after beginning the year 3-0.<\/p>\n
Similarly to the Sabres, the Panthers have been hindered by injuries to several key pieces. Captain and three-time Selke Trophy winner Aleksander Barkov suffered a torn right ACL and MCL in September and Matthew Tkachuk is reportedly out until December due to surgery on a torn adductor and sports hernia.<\/p>\n
The Panthers are without Tomas Nosek and were dealt a further blow as coach Paul Maurice announced on Wednesday that veteran defenseman Dmitry Kulikov underwent surgery after sustaining a labral tear and is out for five months.<\/p>\n
Despite the injury hits, key returnees such as Sam Bennett, Sam Reinhart and Brad Marchand \u2013 who was six points in six games \u2013 remain.<\/p>\n
Ruff said his group will be challenged against a cohesive Panthers defensive unit and an offense that\u2019s difficult to stop in transition.<\/p>\n
“They know how to win, they’re a deep team,” Ruff said. \u201cThey’re missing a couple big pieces but they still got [Brad] Marchand, you still got [Sam] Reinhart, you got [Aaron] Ekblad, you got a defense that’s really good. You got a goaltender that’s won two Stanley Cups, so we know we’re in for a heck of a battle.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Panthers enter Saturday\u2019s showdown on a three-game losing streak with defeats to the Philadelphia Flyers, Detroit Red…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-234552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}