The Florida Panthers haven’t had good injury luck so far this season.
Aleksander Barkov and Brad Marchand both went down within a week of each other with apparent knee injuries.
Having a pair of veteran, star forwards hurt in the same window of time is particularly painful.
But as far as recovery timelines, the Panthers actually seem to have had decent luck.
Barkov isn’t expected to miss the whole season. Instead, it seems like it’ll be a couple months. Given that he didn’t play a regular season game once last year, that’s a positive.
And the latest news on Marchand, who was more recently injured, is positive, too.
AP Reveals When Brad Marchand Could Come Back From Injury
Tim Reynolds of the Associated Press provided an update about Marchand on X on Thursday evening.
This is what Reynolds wrote:
“The expectation is that Florida forward Brad Marchand will be fine in a few weeks, per source. It’s not season ending. He could be back sometime in November. We expect more detail from Paul Maurice tomorrow.”
That detail from Panthers head coach Paul Maurice should come in a media availability on Friday at some point around when the Panthers practice.
The Panthers probably won’t provide a ton more information, but they can at least give some kind of expectation or timeline.
Hockey teams don’t usually give too many specific details on the injury itself, but given that every report coming out seems positive, it does seem like Marchand should be OK for the long haul.
Injury Irony
There is one bit of irony here with Marchand.
He wasn’t quite ready to play at the start of the season after undergoing offseason surgery for an unspecified reason.
As training camp went on, reports indicated Marchand may not return until November.
Instead, he only missed a few games, but then pretty quickly, he got hurt.
So now it’s a new injury that might keep Marchand out until November.
It’s not to say anything was rushed, but rather just to recognize the irony that on some timelines, Marchand was back way ahead of schedule. Now he’s got a new injury, and it might put him back on the original timeline a bit.
As long as the Panthers have Marchand back for the games that matter at the end of the year, they’ll be OK with that.
The key for Florida will be ensuring that they put themselves in a good standings position even while playing games without Barkov or Marchand.
This is When Brad Marchand Could Come Back From Injury