Florida Panthers Defenseman Aaron Ekblad to Return from Injury

FORT LAUDERDALE — Aaron Ekblad will return to the Florida Panthers lineup on Tuesday against the Ottawa Senators after missing Saturday’s 9-2 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning with an injury.

Ekblad only missed that one game after being listed as ‘day-to-day’ with a lower-body injury on Saturday morning.

Josh Mahura will be scratched to make room for his return.

Dmitry Kulikov will be good to go for the Panthers after leaving Monday’s practice early with an apparent injury.

“He’s good,” coach Paul Maurice said.

Ekblad has three goals and 14 points in 37 games and had not missed any time with injury since returning from a shoulder injury sustained in the Stanley Cup Final before Saturday.

While his offensive numbers are not where they were earlier in his career, he has been having the best season of his career on the defensive end.

“I did it because that was what the game decided I needed to do,” Ekblad told Florida Hockey Now of his shift in playstyle back in December.

“We didn’t need more offense. The team was creating a lot of offense, so getting up in the rush isn’t necessarily for me to be on offense, but it’s to set my gap coming back.

“So, a lot of times, when you see me up in the rush, I’m trying to set my gap so that I’m already skating with those guys as they come out of the zone and creating good gap speed. Forsling and I do that a lot, and our whole d-core does that a lot. It’s just a pillar of hockey that we’ve learned that needs to happen for us to be good.”

ON DECK

OTTAWA SENATORS @ FLORIDA PANTHERS

• When: Tuesday, 7 p.m.
• Where: Amerant Bank Arena, Sunrise
• TV/Streaming: Bally Sports Florida, ESPN+
• Radio: WPOW 96.5-FM2; WBZT 1230-AM (Palm Beach); WCTH 100.3-FM (Florida Keys); SiriusXM
• Panthers Radio Streaming: SiriusXM 932, NHL App
• Local Odds — Panthers Favored: Money Line (-250); Puck line (-1.5, -11o); Over/Under 6.5 (-140/+115)
• Last Season: Florida won 2-1
• This Season (Panthers Lead 1-0) — At Ottawa: Panthers 5, Senators 0 (Nov.27); April 4. At Florida: Tuesday; April 9
• All-time Regular Season Series: Ottawa leads 57-45-5, 3 ties
• Up Next for the Panthers: Thursday at Carolina, 7 p.m.

PROJECTED FLORIDA PANTHERS (35-15-4) LINES

23 Carter Verhaeghe // 16 Sasha Barkov// 13 Sam Reinhart

21 Nick Cousins // 9 Sam Bennett // 19 Matthew Tkachuk

27 Eetu Luostarinen // 15 Anton Lundell // 17 Evan Rodrigues

12 Jonah Gadjovich // 82 Kevin Stenlund //94 Ryan Lomberg

42 Gus Forsling // 5 Aaron Ekblad

77 Niko Mikkola // 62 Brandon Montour

91 Oliver Ekman-Larsson// 7 Dmitry Kulikov

72 Sergei Bobrovsky

41 Anthony Stolarz

Scratched: Josh Mahura, Steven Lorentz, Will Lockwood

Injured: None

PROJECTED OTTAWA SENATORS (23-27-2) LINEUP

71 Ridly Greig // 9 Josh Norris // 19 Drake Batherson

21 Mathieu Joseph // 18 Tim Stutzle // 28 Claude Giroux

7 Brady Tkachuk // 57 Shane Pinto // 91 Vladimir Tarasenko

81 Dominik Kubalik // 12 Mark Kastelic // 27 Parker Kelly

85 Jake Sanderson // 2 Artem Zub

72 Thomas Chabot // 24 Jacob Bernard-Docker

6 Jakob Chychrun // 26 Erik Brannstrom

70 Joonas Korpisalo

31 Anton Forsberg

Scratched: Travis Hamonic

Injured: None

Senators lines provided by NHL.com