The Florida Panthers will resume their schedule on Saturday following an extended league-wide break for the 4 Nations Face-Off.
Florida had eight players, the most of any NHL team, participating in the 4 Nations tournament.
Three of those players – Sam Bennett, Sam Reinhart and Matthew Tkachuk – are still making their way back to South Florida.
The other five – Sasha Barkov, Anton Lundell, Eetu Luostarinen, Niko Mikkola and Gustav Forsling – have returned to the team and should be in the lineup when Florida hosts the Seattle Kraken on Saturday night in Sunrise.
Over the past couple days, Florida has held some less-than-full team practices at their new facility in Fort Lauderdale
Thursday saw only 11 players on the ice while a couple of the 4 Nations guys, Barkov and Forsling, joined the group on Friday.
Speaking afterwards, Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice provided an update on many of his players’ status ahead of Saturday’s matchup with Seattle.
Of the five guys who were at 4 Nations, the only one who isn’t expected to play against the Kraken is Tkachuk.
“Everybody plays that’s healthy,” said Maurice. “And that would include Matthew, but my expectation is that he wouldn’t be playing tomorrow.”
Maurice said for now to consider Tkachuk day-to-day.
“I’ll give you a pretty good update over the next couple days,” he said.
Tkachuk was dealing with his injury during the 4 Nations tournament, missing parts of both games against Canada and the entire match against Sweden.
The Panthers were closely monitoring their players from afar and the hope is that Tkachuk didn’t cause any more serious issues after trying to play through his injury during the 4 Nations title game.
“I don’t know that anything changed in that game from the game prior in terms of his injury,” Maurice said. “He’ll get back in here today, we’ll look at him over today and tomorrow. I’ll probably have a better handle on (the injury) tomorrow but not a final one. It would be like we played Thursday, and he didn’t finish the game. I don’t know that I’ve got him in or out tomorrow. My expectation is that we’re going to give him some rest no matter what, and then we’ll get a good handle on it here over the next two or three days.”
The key will be getting Tkachuk back in the building and under the care of the Panthers’ medical team.
Florida’s staff will get a proper rundown from the trainers and medical group that worked with Team USA and then after giving Tkachuk a physical analysis upon his return, they’ll determine the best plan to move forward.
“They don’t call me,” Maurice said of the Team USA medical staff. “They’ll talk to our guys, but I wouldn’t release what it was until our guys got a handle on it, because they know every injury for the last ten years. He was good enough to get in the lineup, not enough to finish the game.”
The Panthers come out of the 4 Nations break with a friendly schedule that keeps them mostly in South Florida for the next couple weeks.
They’ll play six of their next seven on home ice, with just a quick trip up to Nashville on Tuesday acting as their only trip out of town.
We’ll see what the word is on Tkachuk after he gets back to town.
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