Things just continue to spiral for the two-time defending Stanley Cup champions.<\/p>\n
According to George Richards of Florida Hockey Now<\/a>, the Florida Panthers<\/a> are set to be without defensemen Aaron Ekblad and Dmitry Kulikov for Thursday night\u2019s tilt against<\/a> the Boston Bruins<\/a> due to upper-body injuries. Given the severity of both players\u2019 ailments, they might be done for the rest of the season.<\/p>\n During Tuesday night\u2019s game against the Ottawa Senators<\/a>, Ekblad blocked a shot with his right hand during a penalty kill, but stayed on the ice. Richards reported that Ekblad suffered a fracture in his hand, which could keep him out of the lineup for the final weeks of the campaign.<\/p>\n Kulikov was also hurt in the Panthers\u2019 6-3 win over the Senators. Kulikov exited earlier in the third period after taking a puck to the face, with head coach Paul Maurice later revealing that the Russian rearguard was going to need a CT scan to determine how badly Kulikov was hurt.<\/p>\n The latest injuries only add to the laundry list of star players that the Panthers are without as their bumbling 2025-26 campaign comes to an end. The team\u2019s chances of defending its title took a hit in the preseason when captain Aleksander Barkov suffered an ACL and BCL injury that has knocked him out for the entire season<\/a>. Brad Marchand has been out <\/a>for the past month with a lower-body injury, with Sam Reinhart<\/a> likely done for the season as well.<\/p>\n Anton Lundell<\/a>, Evan Rodrigues<\/a>, Cole Schwindt<\/a>, Jonah Gadjovich, Niko Mikkola and Uvis Balinskis<\/a> are all Florida regulars who are out of commission right now. At least the team will have a long offseason to rest up for a hopefully better outcome during the 2026-27 season.<\/p>\n In 72 games this year, Ekblad has scored four goals and 22 assists<\/a> for 26 points. Kulikov, who missed almost five months after getting hurt just two games into the season, hasn\u2019t registered a point in his 17 appearances.<\/p>\n The Panthers (36-35-3) are last in the Atlantic Division<\/a>, and could officially be eliminated from postseason contention<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Things just continue to spiral for the two-time defending Stanley Cup champions. According to George Richards of Florida…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5102],"tags":[62,57,5141,5,4,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-536700","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida-panthers","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-panthers","10":"tag-floridapanthers","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-panthers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116335694681745742","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}