Florida Hockey Now, Staff Report
FORT LAUDERDALE — Florida Panthers captain Sasha Barkov could miss the entire season after needing surgery on his right knee.
Barkov was hurt on a non-contact play in practice on Thursday morning; coach Paul Maurice said Barkov was having surgery on the knee Friday morning.
Maurice did not say what the extent of Barkov’s injury was, nor did he have a timeline for a potential return.
That, he said, could come later this afternoon.
The Panthers, Maurice added, are going to be fully transparent on the injury and give a full update once Barkov gets out of surgery.
“There’s no hiding it, that’s a hole,’’ Maurice said of losing Barkov. “That’s the big man. He is such an important piece in that locker room. What we’ll get to know now is some of the other leaders in the room. We’ll get to see other players and, at the end of the day, I know there’s the idea of ‘next man up,’ and I get all that. But there’s no a next-man for Barky’s skates. We just have to share it, spread it across the room and among the coaches. We have to share that.”
Barkov was injured Thursday when he was moving in on defenseman Niko Mikkola, planted his right leg, and went down.
Maurice called it a “fluke play” that had nothing to do with the Panthers playing 314 games over the past three seasons.
“That’s why you can’t bubblewrap player, keep them out of games or save them,’’ Maurice said. “It can happen anywhere, can happen at practice.
“You don’t want this to happen, but it might as well happen early so we can deal with it and learn a lot more about the other players we have.’’
This is a breaking story and will be updated
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