Next man up: Florida relying on their depth as players recover from injury

It has not been the prettiest of stretches for the Florida Panthers in the last two weeks, going all the way back to Mar. 12 against the Dallas Stars.

Florida is 0-3-1 in their last four games.

Prior to that game in the Lone Star State, Florida lost defenseman Aaron Ekblad to a lower-body injury after he collided with newly acquired Panther Vladimir Tarasenko in the neutral zone one game post trade deadline.

Ekblad skated on Monday and barring any setbacks, his status is expected to flip to day-to-day following the weekend.

After Dallas tilted the ice for the first 40 minutes, the Panthers used a 3:29 stretch and scored three unanswered squeak a regulation win on the road.

Later that week, Florida lost another player at home against the Tampa Bay Lightning. Not due to injury, as Dmitry Kulikov was assessed a five-minute major and a game misconduct for an illegal check to the head on forward Conor Sheary.

The NHL Department of Player Safety handed Kulikov a two-game suspension, which ended after Florida’s 4-3 shootout loss against the New York Rangers.

Expect Kulikov to be back in the lineup when the Panthers visit the Philadelphia Flyers on Sunday.

Florida outshot Tampa Bay 38-5 in the final 40 minutes on Mar. 16, where they got back to their bread and butter of creating scoring chances on the forecheck. It was not enough to complete a comeback after trailing 4-0 as the Lightning were victorious winning 5-3 in Sunrise to avoid the season series sweep.

The list of players missing got longer when captain Aleksander Barkov missed practice on Monday and Wednesday and did not dress in the Panthers 3-0 loss to Nashville on Thursday or their tilt against the Rangers from Madison Square Garden Saturday night. 

If Florida is missing anybody the most, it’s Barkov. They are 3-3-2 in games without their captain this season. 

Here are numbers to back that up:

Let’s start with special teams. Florida has converted 12.5% of their power play opportunities with Barkov out of the lineup, their season average is 26%.

The complete 200-foot player and likely Selke Trophy winner in Barkov has a strong presence with what he does from the right-side half wall. His ability quickly to get the puck quickly down low for the quick triangle passing play to Matthew Tkachuk has opponents on their toes.

Barkov’s secondary assists on the power play a lot of the time starts from there prior to Tkachuk using the touch pass to feed Sam Reinhart, where they have found the back of the net a bunch of times on the year.

As a result, Reinhart has 27 goals on the power play, a franchise record.

Florida’s Penalty kill rate is at 65.5% with Barkov out of the lineup, the season average is at 81.9%. Barkov jokingly said before the season that with Patrice Bergeron retiring that maybe his faceoff percentage would go up a percentage point or two.

It turns out that he was not joking. Barkov is set to get to a career high in face-off percentage, where he is currently at 57.4%. That sure comes up big when Florida is down a man and need to possess the puck to clear some time off their penalties and get the necessary changes.

Let’s consider that he is taking less draws with being paired with Reinhart most situations. Him being out of the lineup also has other players like Anton Lundell playing up a few lines and Eetu Luostarinen shifting back to center too on the third line.

Florida scores 2.88 goals a game with Barkov out (0.33 less goals for per game) and 3.13 goals against (0.70 more than their season average) in his eight games missed.

The Panthers will once again be without Barkov’s on Sunday against the Flyers.

Florida added one more to the list of injuries where the league leader in plus-minus at plus-46 in Gustav Forsling missed his second game of the season on Saturday night.

Head Coach Paul Maurice said that Forsling is dealing with an illness and that he will be a game-time decision for Sunday night at the Wells Fargo Center.

With Forsling and Kulikov out, Maurice had to be creative with how he set up the pairs in all situations. Not only that, but players who play important minutes on special teams, like Brandon Montour and Oliver Ekman-Larsson. Florida also plugged in Tobias Bjornfot into the lineup on Saturday as he made his Panthers debut.

With four of their best penalty killers out, the Panthers weathered the storm with conceding one on the penalty kill Saturday.

“We have four penalty killers out of our lineup, and they're all really high-end penalty killers,” Maurice said. “Sergei [Bobrovsky] made a couple of big saves. We were anchored right…it was fantastic and the bench was right.”

Although Maurice was not pleased with the Panthers’ effort against Nashville, stating that they tried force plays off the rush, they got back to their style of game against the Rangers.

Two of their three goals came with winning battles in their oppositions end and keeping plays alive. One of those included Carter Verhaeghe’s go ahead goal at 15:52 of the third, his first goal since Feb. 17. Despite the Rangers completing a comeback, it was a big road point considering who was missing.

It’s about timing when it comes to the health of the roster. Slowly but surely, with 12 games to go, Florida is hoping to get some good news on that front. This time last year, Sam Bennett missed time and returned healthy in game two of the first round against the Boston Bruins. 

Bobrovsky was healthy enough to back up Alex Lyon at the end of the regular season and postseason, where he took over the net in the middle of game three of round one and never surrendered the crease after that.

Florida is hoping to have that same luck heading into the postseason as we are 29 days away, but who’s counting? 

LATEST STORIES FROM THE HOCKEY NEWS - FLORIDA

Ex-Panther Alex Lyon loses 8th straight start for Red Wings

Three takeaways: Despite missing several regulars, Panthers play best game in weeks

Panthers look to end 4 game losing streak as they take on the Flyers Sunday

Shorthand Panthers put up strong effort, lose in shootout to Rangers

Panthers look to end 4 game losing streak as they take on the Flyers Sunday

Shorthanded Panthers put up strong effort, lose in shootout to Rangers