Barkov Skates Ahead of Florida Panthers Thursday Night Clash with Vancouver
Florida Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov skated for the first time since sustaining a lower-body injury during the team's morning skate on Thursday.
On Thursday morning, Florida Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov skated for the first time since sustaining a lower-body injury against the Ottawa Senators last week.
He was originally slated to be out for 2-3 weeks, and per head coach Paul Maurice, is still expected to be on that same timeline going forward.
“We are going to be smart,” Maurice said. “He is really in tune with his body. He puts a lot of time into it. He was here yesterday just getting worked on and he will play as soon as he says he is 100 percent ready.”
Maurice expects that to come sometime before the Panthers head to Barkov’s hometown of Tampere, Finland to take on the Dallas Stars in the NHL’s Global Series on Nov. 1 and 2.
“We don’t feel we are behind it by any means,” he said. “We are hopeful that it would be sometime on the New York trip (Oct. 23-28). It may not be, it may be, but we’re quite confident that he can get in [the lineup] in Finland.
“But these kinds of injuries, you’ve got to get through a week of hard skating with no relapse. We’re really happy with where he is at.”
The Panthers are 2-1-0 in three games without Barkov while also missing star winger Matthew Tkachuk.
He has been dealing with an illness and is on track to return to the lineup on Oct. 22 against the Minnesota Wild.
“He’s good,” Maurice said. “We had other concerns about how we needed to get some tests done and they all came back really strong, so he is going to skate, I believe, tomorrow. He’s got another appointment and we’re pleased with where that is.
“We’ll skate him if he comes back feeling good, because he feels good, which is really positive. So we’ll get him on the ice and get two or three heavy days out of him and then he’ll get back in.”
THE NEWS
Today’s game will air at 7 p.m. EST on Scripps Sports and Panthers Plus. It will also be available for streaming on ESPN+ for those outside of the Panthers’ broadcast territory.
For more information on how to catch this afternoon’s game, visit nhl.com/panthers/info/how-to-watch.
PANTHERS PROJECTED LINEUP
Eetu Luostarinen — Anton Lundell — Sam Reinhart
Carter Verhaeghe — Sam Bennett — Evan Rodrigues
A.J. Greer — Jesper Boqvist — Mackie Samoskevich
Jonah Gadjovich — Patrick Giles
Gustav Forsling — Aaron Ekblad
Niko Mikkola — Dmitry Kulikov
Uvis Balinskis — Adam Boqvist/Nate Schmidt
Sergei Bobrovsky
Spencer Knight
Scratched: Matthew Tkachuk (illness)
Injured: Tomas Nosek (LTIR), Justin Sourdif (SOIR), Aleksander Barkov
VANCOUVER CANUCKS PROJECTED LINEUP
Arshdeep Bains — J.T. Miller — Brock Boeser
Danton Heinen — Elias Pettersson — Jake DeBrusk
Nils Hoglander — Pius Suter —Connor Garland
Kieffer Sherwood — Teddy Blueger — Daniel Sprong
Quinn Hughes — Filip Hronek
Carson Soucy — Tyler Myers
Derek Forbort — Noah Juulsen
Kevin Lankinen
Arturs Silovs
Injured: Thatcher Demko, Dakota Joshua
(Canucks lines via DailyFaceoff.com)