{"id":245799,"date":"2025-07-29T16:54:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T16:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/245799\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T16:54:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T16:54:11","slug":"panthers-defenseman-comes-out-of-retirement-to-sign-new-contract-after-almost-4-years-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/245799\/","title":{"rendered":"Panthers&#8217; defenseman comes out of retirement to sign new contract after almost 4 years away"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The last NHL appearance for Markus Nutivaara came on Oct. 29, 2021. He played seven minutes for the Florida Panthers.<\/p>\n<p>Nutivaara was trying to come back from multiple hip surgeries, and he recorded an assist, but he hasn&#8217;t played an NHL game since.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>The San Jose Sharks had signed him to a contract the following offseason, but he never got on the regular season ice for them.<\/p>\n<p>Now, more than three years later, Nutivaara is trying to get back on the ice.<\/p>\n<p>He retired two seasons ago, but he&#8217;s unretired and heading to play for his Finnish hometown&#8217;s team Karpat. The club <a href=\"https:\/\/karpat.fi\/markus-nutivaara-tekee-paluun-pelikentille-ja-karppapaitaan\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:announced;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">announced<\/a> it had signed Nutivaara to a one-year deal.<\/p>\n<p>Nutivaara is 31 years old now, and this will be his first pro hockey action since announcing his retirement two years ago.<\/p>\n<p>He was originally a seventh-round pick by the Blue Jackets in 2015 and came stateside a year later. He was a reliable depth piece for Columbus, playing in 244 games across four seasons.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Nutivaara was then traded to the Panthers, where he played 30 games in the 2020-21 season before his lone game the following year.<\/p>\n<p>The announcement from Karpat in Finland indicates that Nutivaara had a hip procedure in Nov. 2024 that got an artificial joint installed. He&#8217;s put a lot into this comeback try, for sure, and although he likely won&#8217;t ever get back to the NHL, at least now he&#8217;s back on the ice.<\/p>\n<p>MORE:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/nba\/los-angeles-lakers\/news\/lakers-bronny-james-reveals-health-issue-heart-defect-cardiac-arrest\/dda4c94a35a55da0a5e9254e\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Lakers&#039; Bronny James reveals ongoing health issue that stems from cardiac arrest, heart defect;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Lakers&#8217; Bronny James reveals ongoing health issue that stems from cardiac arrest, heart defect<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The last NHL appearance for Markus Nutivaara came on Oct. 29, 2021. He played seven minutes for the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2075],"tags":[49266,32396,235,260,2567,7,49265,6,4475,236,10007],"class_list":{"0":"post-245799","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-carolina-panthers","8":"tag-blue-jackets","9":"tag-bronny-james","10":"tag-carolina","11":"tag-carolina-panthers","12":"tag-carolinapanthers","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-markus-nutivaara","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-nhl","17":"tag-panthers","18":"tag-san-jose-sharks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114937571866244416","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}