Florida Panthers center Eetu Luostarinen will be sidelined for the immediate future after he suffered burns due to a “barbecuing mishap,” head coach Paul Maurice said Wednesday.
“Eetu had a barbecuing mishap, seriously, and he suffered burns,” Maurice told reporters. “So I’m going to list him as ‘week-to-week’ because we don’t have a lot of experience with this. And some of it is when he comes back and feels comfortable with equipment on, away we go. He wasn’t in the hospital overnight. He didn’t get seen by doctors, in that vein.”
Maurice didn’t specify when Luostarinen’s injury occurred, and said he didn’t seek medical treatment at a hospital. The Finland native last played for the Panthers in a 3-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Nov. 15.
Luostarinen, 27, is a two-time Stanley Cup champion, having won each of the past two titles with Panthers. He is in his seventh NHL season and sixth with Florida after playing his rookie season for the Carolina Hurricanes. He has three goals and seven assists in 18 games played for the Panthers this season.
Luostarinen is one of seven Panthers players who are currently injured, which Maurice admit is a challenge for the depleted two-time defending champions.
“There’s an awful lot of good if you can capture, if you can learn some new things, things that you have to learn to survive,” he said. “And that’s really in some ways what we’re doing, is trying to survive. When you get to seven guys out of your lineup, you’ve got a problem. We can survive that and then learn through the adversity of it eventually.
“We’re going to have, slightly after the trade deadline, the biggest movement in the league. We’re going to get some players back. We can be a better team than we were going into the playoffs last year, if we can learn how to do this. It’s just going to be hard. It’s going to be uncomfortable right now. And we’ve got to be good with that,” he added.
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