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By Michael Gallagher
Sports Content Coordinator
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A week-and-a-half away from their regular-season opener against the Chicago Blackhawks, and the Florida Panthers are already facing a worst-case scenario situation.
Captain Aleksander Barkov, who’s led the Panthers to back-to-back Stanley Cup championships the last two season, left Thursday’s practice with an apparent knee injury.
While the team and its fans were holding out hope that it wasn’t serious, their fears were all but confirmed on Friday when head coach Paul Maurice announced that Barkov was undergoing knee surgery and a more detailed update would likely come later in the day.
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“’Barky' is in surgery right now," Maurice said, via NHL.com. “When he comes out, we’ll get final information on how the surgery went and we will get you all the information and it will be pretty detailed. We’ll be real transparent with it. That should happen hopefully later today.”
NHL insider David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period then said what many Panthers fans were dreading: “Not good news for Panthers. Fear is entire season is toast.”
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Losing Barkov for the entire season is a gut-punch the Panthers might not be able to recover from.
“I know there’s the idea of ‘next man up,’ and I get all that,” Maurice added. “But there’s no next-man for Barky’s skates. We just have to share it, spread it across the room and among the coaches. We have to share that.”
The Panthers were already without star forward Matthew Tkachuk, who’s been ruled out until at least December or possibly January after suffering a torn adductor muscle and a sports hernia injury during the 4 Nations Face-Off last year that hampered him during the team’s run to the Stanley Cup Final, and fourth-line center Stefan Nosek, who will be out indefinitely with a “long-term injury.”
The Panthers do have a roster deep with talent including Sam Reinhart, Brad Marchand, Carter Verhaeghe, Sam Bennett, and Anton Lundell, but losing Barkov, Tkachuk and Nosek for extended periods of time could put Florida in a hole too big to dig out from by playoff time.
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