As the Florida Panthers look to make history this season and take home a 3rd straight Stanley Cup championship, they will be tested like they never have before this year.
The Panthers received a brutal injury blow this week in practice as captain Sacha Barkov suffered a torn ACL, which will require surgery and put him out 7-9 months. This procedure will likely leave Barkov on the sidelines for the season.
This news comes not long after another star forward Matthew Tkachuk underwent surgery for a torn adductor that will likely keep him out of action until January of the new year.
How will this affect Florida's Stanley Cup chances?
Panthers coach Paul Maurice said it best in a media interview that the impact of Alex Barkov can't be replaced even in the Cats stacked lineup. Florida will hope Tkachuk is at least back to 100% when they get him back in the 2026 portion of the season.
No doubt losing the team's two top forwards for an extended period of time will test the Panthers adversity to an unforeseen level. But, if there's one team that can find a way to persevere it's them. Florida GM Bill Zito has to be feeling pretty good about the big contract extensions he got done this summer right about now, keeping the defending Cup winning squad mostly intact.
The Panthers depth will be counted on to get them through this injury riddled time. Florida just has to make it through this 2025 portion of the year, as long as they can still punch their playoff ticket it would be foolish to count this organization out in the postseason.