Florida Panthers' Paul Maurice: Aleksander Barkov will not play this season

Jordan McPherson, Miami Herald on Mar 29, 2026

Published in Hockey

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The Florida Panthers held out hope they would get captain Aleksander Barkov back on the ice this season after a training camp injury forced him to get surgery on the ACL and MCL in his right knee.

That hope, primarily, was that he would return for a potential Stanley Cup playoff run, a chase for a third consecutive championship.

Those playoff hopes are gone, with the Panthers all but mathematically eliminated from postseason contention as injuries ravaged their roster and kept them on the outside looking in of the playoff picture all season.

And while Barkov has been skating with the team for a good bit now, Panthers coach Paul Maurice shut down the notion that Barkov could potentially see the ice before the regular season ends.

“No. I don’t think so,” Maurice told reporters Sunday prior to the Panthers’ road game against the New York Rangers. “Not in the situation. So they give you a two-month window [to return] on these knee injuries. He’ll get inside that two-month window, but why would we? We’ll take the whole two months before he plays a hockey game again because we just wouldn’t want to ... if it’s six-to-eight [weeks] and we put him in at seven and something happens, that doesn’t make much sense, so we’ll have him go through the entire rehab process.”

Barkov sustained the noncontact injury within the first half hour of his first training camp practice on Sept. 25. He had surgery the next day. The projected timeline of recovery at that time was seven to nine months. That pointed to a late-April return on the early end of the timeline. The Panthers’ regular-season schedule ends April 15.

However, Barkov began doing individual on-ice drills in January and joined the team for practice sessions in a non-contact jersey in mid-March. Florida’s captain, who holds the franchise’s career records for games played (804), goals (286), assists (496) and points (782) among other categories, remained optimistic about his recovery.

“I’m really happy where I am right now,” Barkov said in late February. “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. I trust them, and they will always make the right decision. And I know hopefully, very soon, I’ll be back with the team.”

Right now, it looks like that will be next season.