{"id":515653,"date":"2026-03-10T20:19:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T20:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/515653\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T20:19:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T20:19:10","slug":"aleksander-barkov-returns-to-practice-pro-hockey-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/515653\/","title":{"rendered":"Aleksander Barkov Returns To Practice \u2013 Pro Hockey Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Panthers captain\u00a0Aleksander Barkov<\/a>\u00a0appeared to be lost for the season when he tore both his ACL and MCL in his right knee on his first day of training camp. He\u2019s been pushing for an early return, though, and has been doing light skating work on his own<\/a> as part of his rehab since the end of December. That culminated in Barkov joining the team for a practice session, albeit in a non-contact jersey, for the first time this morning, the team\u2019s Jameson Olive<\/a> relays.<\/p>\n

Florida and Barkov both hoped that if he did push the envelope for his return, it would be with the intent of captaining them to a third straight Stanley Cup. Unfortunately, a wide range of other impactful injuries completely derailed the Cats\u2019 season. They\u2019re not technically eliminated from playoff contention, but, with 19 games to go, are third-last in the East and sit 11 points back of a playoff spot. Their chances of making the playoffs are down to just 1.5%, per MoneyPuck<\/a>, with a greater chance at winning the draft lottery for the first overall pick.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, there\u2019s little reason to work him into the lineup if he\u2019s anything less than 100%. Outside of\u00a0Sergei Bobrovsky<\/a>, all of Florida\u2019s core is signed long-term and still has a chance at multiple deep playoff runs with their group. Those long-term hopes will be dashed if Barkov sustains any additional damage or prevents his knee from fully healing, though.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, one of the most competitive individuals in the sport will bite at the chance to get back on the ice, even if it\u2019s for a few ultimately meaningless games at the end of the schedule. It\u2019s incredibly rare for a player of Barkov\u2019s caliber to miss an entire season in his prime. Even the most notable examples this century,\u00a0Peter Forsberg<\/a>\u00a0in 2001-02 and Nikita Kucherov<\/a> in 2020-21, saw their clubs make the postseason without them and return\u00a0to be their club\u2019s top contributors on long playoff runs.<\/p>\n

Hopefully, the fact that Barkov\u2019s recovery has seemingly gone as smoothly as it has is a promising sign that he\u2019ll hit the ground running in the fall for his age-31 season. He\u2019s won back-to-back Selke Trophies and has passed the point-per-game threshold six times in the last seven seasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Panthers captain\u00a0Aleksander Barkov\u00a0appeared to be lost for the season when he tore both his ACL and MCL in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[222381,4820,385,99],"class_list":["post-515653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-aleksander-barkov","tag-florida-panthers","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515653","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=515653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}