How the Florida Panthers are retooling their defense pairings with another key player out
Defenseman Dmitry Kulikov is week-to-week after sustaining an apparent injury to his right arm or hand in the first period Sunday against the New York Islanders.
Panthers coach Paul Maurice on Wednesday said the team anticipates Kulikov returning before the end of the regular season, but Kulikov is now the third Florida regular to be sidelined along with star winger Matthew Tkachuk (on long-term injured reserve with an apparent groin injury) and top-pair defenseman Aaron Ekblad (suspended the rest of the regular season plus two playoff games) along with forward Brad Marchand (week-to-week with an upper-body injury).
The timing of the injury isn't ideal. Florida has lost three of its past four games, including dropping a pair in which they had a two-goal lead in the third period.
Now, they have to retool an entire unit late in the season, with just a month to go until the Stanley Cup playoffs begin.
So how will they do it?
With Kulikov out for the time being, the Panthers on Tuesday recalled Tobias Bjornfot to fill in on the blue line. He will draw into the lineup Thursday when the Panthers (41-24-3) resume their six-game road trip against the Columbus Blue Jackets (31-28-8).
Bjornfot played in eight games for the Panthers during a stretch in January when Florida was down a pair of defensemen — that time Ekblad and Niko Mikkola. He didn't record any points in that stretch, but the Panthers had a 126-66 edge in shot attempts and a 6.15-2.37 advantage expected goals when Bjornfot was on the ice at 5-on-5 in that stretch.
'It's nice to have a guy that you bring up that everybody knows when he hops into the room and he gets on the plane,' Maurice said. 'This is normal for him. His games for us have been very good. He's one of those that falls into that category of a guy that when you send him down, you feel bad because he hasn't done anything wrong on the ice. His play has been solid for us. We just have had depth at that position while he's been here. We feel very comfortable with him in our lineup.'
Bjornfot projects to take Kulikov's spot on Florida's second defense pairing opposite Mikkola. That will allow Maurice to keep his other two pairings — Gustav Forsling and Seth Jones up top, Uvis Balinskis and Nate Schmidt in the third pairing — intact.
'It'll be about managing minutes over the course of the two games, running everybody as hard as we need to to win a hockey game,' Maurice said, 'but at the same time, we've got to look at the bigger block. The thing that I prefer to do when you bring something in is just make one change. Do move the fewest pieces as possible to start. So that's kind of the idea.'
This most likely, though, will put even more of an onus on Forsling and Jones to produce despite already playing significantly heavy minutes.
Jones has averaged about 27:30 minutes of ice time over the past four games since moving to the top pairing and the top power-play unit. In his first three Florida games after being acquired from the Chicago Blackhawks, Jones averaged about 21 minutes while playing on Florida's second pairing.
Forsling has averaged about 24:30 minutes over the past four games, slightly above his season average of 22:54.
'We prefer that those guys were at 25 [minutes] or under,' Maurice said.
But with a month until the playoffs and the Panthers trying to get out of a rare funk, they're going to do whatever they can to get back to their winning ways.
More injury updates
Maurice said there have been no changes to the timetables for either Tkachuk or Marchand.
Tkachuk has not been on the ice since sustaining his lower-body injury during the 4 Nations Face-Off but the team is targeting him returning during the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Marchand, acquired from the Boston Bruins at the trade deadline, sustained his injury on March 1 while playing for Boston against the Pittsburgh Penguins. He took part in two of the Panthers' three morning skates last week and was a full participant in practice on Wednesday.
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