Both Montour and Ekblad are recovering from offseason shoulder surgery

The Florida Panthers gave everything they had to reach the Stanley Cup Final earlier this summer.

When the dust settled on the season, several of Florida’s players were quite banged up and needed time to heal.

Two players needed more than just time and ultimately underwent shoulder surgery, defensemen Brandon Montour and Aaron Ekblad.

The expectation that Florida planned for when approaching free agency last month was that both Montour and Ekblad would have to miss some time once the season began.

How much time was the big question. 

While Ekblad has stayed off the radar during the offseason, Montour spoke to the Cam and Strick Podcast late last month and provided some info on his recovery.

He said his sling was off and that he was still waiting to start lifting weights while working with his trainer back home in Ontario.

The hope, Montour said, is that he’s back on the ice sometime next month.

On Tuesday, Panthers General Manager Bill Zito spoke with Boomer Gordon and Jake Hahn on the Sirius XM NHL Power Play show. 

Asked about his injured rearguards, Zito said both players are healing and on schedule as far as what their doctors had mapped out in terms of their recovery.

“The intel I’m getting back is that they’re on time,” Zito said. “It’ll be a month or two. Is it four (months)? Probably not. Is it one (month)? Probably not. That’s as well as I could get, but every time I check in, I’m told (they’re) on schedule).”

Sometime in the next month or two, which would be September and October, sure sounds like a positive update. 

Opening Night is Oct. 12 in Minnesota, Florida's home opener is a week later on Oct. 19, and all-in-all the Panthers will play eight games during the first month of the season. 

The thing is, these are very optimistic outlooks. 

Going back to July 1 when free agency opened, Zito and his staff had to plan for the worst. 

They made sure the Panthers would not be caught with their hockey pants around their skates if either or both of Ekblad or Montour needed more time to heal. 

Florida signed free agent defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Niko Mikkola, Mike Reilly and Dmitry Kulikov and re-signed Lucas Carlsson and Casey Fitzgerald, to help fortify the back line. 

Those six will join Gus Forsling and Josh Mahura on the Panthers blue line, and they’ll have to hold down the fort until Florida gets its big guns back on defense. z