Dave Hyde: Eight men out? Panthers defining their greatness in a new way this season.

Dave Hyde, South Florida Sun Sentinel on Jan 14, 2026

Published in Hockey

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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — There’s only one way for Florida Panthers fans to keep rooting this season. That’s for their team to hang in there long enough to start getting some injured players back.

“We know we’ll be getting guys back,’’ defenseman Aaron Ekblad said Wednesday after practice.

They’ll keep hanging in, too. It’s hard to think of a better-suited organization to collide with a freakish run of bad injuries than the Panthers.

It doesn’t tell the full story that they entered Wednesday night 12th in the bumper-to-bumper Eastern Conference. They’ve played a game or two fewer than most teams. They’re also a couple wins from fifth despite regularly missing 40% of their lineup and four of their top six players.

“Anything over five guys out or your lineup you don’t play the same way,’’ coach Paul Maurice said. “We’re at eight now. To still be relevant and in it, I think there’s a sense of pride in the room.

“There’s hope on the horizon with guys coming back, but it’s hockey so you could lose a guy just as quick as another guy comes back.”

The state of the Panthers is understood by the color spectrum of practice jerseys at Wednesday’s workout. At one end of the ice, Brad Marchand fired pucks on an empty net in a yellow jersey meant for non-contact as he heals from some unannounced injury.

Up the color spectrum, Matthew Tkachuk worked in a powder-blue jersey signifying something between no contact and light contact. Bump him at your own peril, in other words. No one did Wednesday.

That jersey also suggests Tkachuk’s timetable for returning won’t be Friday at Carolina or Saturday at Washington.

“The healing has been pretty good, his numbers are good — we just don’t want him coming in before he feels he’s ready,’’ Maurice said. “This is a guy who played with a broken collarbone, so he’s going in as soon as he possibly can.

“We just don’t want to influence it. It really has to be his decision when he feels not only he can go in but stay in.”

All this season Maurice has sought a balance between stability and fluidity in working with a changing lineup. This looked over the summer like a lineup card that would fill out itself. Then players started falling with Aleksander Barkov on the first day of camp right through Seth Jones in the Winter Classic.

How to navigate it? Who to lean on? It falls to the Panthers’ surviving players to do more. This is a season where after three Stanley Cup Final runs you’d want them to do less, too.

Marchand, at 37, is playing a minute more per game than last season and has a team-leading 46 points. Anton Lundell and Evan Rodrigues average about two minutes more. Sam Reinhart has the fourth-most ice time in the league among forwards at almost a minute more (21:19) than last year and leads the Panthers with 24 goals.

“I’m playing him more than I want to play him,’’ Maurice said of Reinhart. “I’d like to get his minutes closer to 20. But he’s also killing penalties in the No. 1 hole, driving the power play and then he plays against the other team’s best. Incredible player.”

The issues won’t end when the Panthers return from the looming Olympic break. With eight players going to the Olympics and a cast of others still on the mend, Maurice already has decided the Panthers can’t re-open for practice when other teams do.

“We’ll have about 13 guys,’’ he said. “So we will do some off-ice training before we put them back on the ice.

Everyone knows who the Panthers are after two straight titles. No one knows if they can keep holding it together without getting some players healthy. The schedule is road-heavy from here, too.

Maurice pointed to three years ago when they scrambled over the final four months to make the final spot in the playoffs while learning his new style. That said something. Everything they’ve done since has said plenty.

But eight guys still out?

“It’s difficult to get on a run with eight guys out,’’ he said. “So you’ve got to scratch and claw and stay in it. We are comfortable, I think, in that.”

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