Montreal<\/a> and the NHL offered to make a $1,000 donation to the charity of his choice. His agent recommended the hospital, and Barkov quickly signed off.<\/p>\n“As I learned more about this amazing place, I decided I wanted to be part of it and hoped that they would accept my outreach,” Barkov said. “I am happy to confirm that they did.”<\/p>\n
The commitment to sports medicine for kids comes with Barkov in the home stretch of recovery from the first major injury of his NHL career. The Panthers — who have been decimated by injuries all season, none more important than Barkov’s knee problem — have 25 games left and are eight points out of a wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n
Barkov has won the Selke Trophy in each of the past two seasons as the NHL’s best defensive forward, plus obviously captained the Panthers to titles in each of those two seasons.<\/p>\n
![]()
Aleksander Barkov spoke Tuesday at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Fort Lauderdale as part of an announcement that he had made a seven-figure donation to what will now be called the Barkov Sports Medicine portion of the facility.\u00a0Eliot J. Schechter\/NHLI via Getty Images<\/p>\n
“I can make an argument that Barkov’s the best player in the world,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “You may not agree with it. There are other guys who get more points, but two Selkes, two Stanley Cups … we would be a little better team.”<\/p>\n
Barkov said he has surprised himself with how patient he has been with the process, after getting hurt about 20 minutes into his first training camp practice of the fall.<\/p>\n
That said, he’s raring for his debut. And the Panthers would obviously welcome him back with open arms.<\/p>\n
“I’m really happy where I am right now,” Barkov said. “I know the schedule. I know that I’m in good hands. We have great people working for the Panthers, surgeons and physical therapists and doctors, so I trust them and they will always make the right decision. I know, hopefully — hopefully — very soon I’ll be back with the team.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Feb 24, 2026, 06:07 PM ET FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Florida Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov, who has not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-489025","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\/489025","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=489025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}