The Florida Panthers will now begin to gear up for the return of the 2025-26 NHL season, but their return comes with possible injury concerns for several key players.
The Florida Panthers sent a league-leading 10 players to the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina.
Those players were Matthew Tkachuk, who won gold with Team USA; Brad Marchand, Sam Bennett, and Sam Reinhart, who won silver with Team Canada; Anton Lundell, Eetu Luostarinen, and Niko Mikkola, who took home bronze with Finland; Uvis Balinskis and Sandis Vilmanis with Latvia, and Gustav Forsling with Sweden.
Entering the Olympics, Marchand had been dealing with a pair of injuries that forced him to miss time on two separate occasions.
Tkachuk had also missed the first 47 games of the season while recovering from off-season surgery. Tkachuk had indicated that he wanted to wait until he was completely healthy before returning to the Panthers lineup. Still, he has never hidden his ambition to play for Team USA, and it wouldn’t be too surprising to learn that he was playing through an injury or returned ahead of schedule so he would be ready for the Olympics.
Prior to the Olympics, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman mentioned on his podcast that, following the tournament, several players would reveal they had been playing through injuries and would need time off when they returned to their NHL clubs.
Brad Marchand, Matthew Tkachuk, and Aleksander Barkov (Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images)Marchand feels almost like a lock to be one of those players, as he also missed time during the Olympics while attempting to recover from an undisclosed injury.
With Marchand and Tkachuk, the two likeliest players to fall under this category, the Panthers could have more players quietly dealing with injuries. Lundell sustained an injury in early February but returned to the Panthers lineup before departing for the Olympics. He looked healthy with Finland despite missing one game due to an illness.
His Finnish teammate, Mikkola, is the likelier of the two to be dealing with a lingering issue. Multiple times this season, Mikkola has been forced to exit a game and not return, but each time he has been back in the lineup for the following game. He’s yet to miss a game this season.
Additionally, Bennett dealt with an ailment before the Olympics and missed a game due to an illness, but more speculation has surrounded Reinhart’s health rather than Bennett’s. Reinhart played a very limited role for the Canadians at the Olympics, just a year after playing a prominent role on their 4 Nations Face-Off team.
He had very few minutes at 5-on-5, and when he did play, he wasn’t very effective. In Reinhart’s case, it’s all speculation from observers, as he hasn’t been said to be dealing with any injuries.
The Panthers return to action on Thursday when they take on the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Panthers currently sit eight points out of a playoff spot, with five teams ahead of them. If the Panthers want to make the playoffs, they have a lot of work to do, and the mountain of injuries won’t help.
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