MONTREAL \u2013 It\u2019s a bad time to be a finger if you play for the Florida Panthers.<\/p>\n
Already playing with a broken nose, Dmitry Kulikov suffered a broken finger in Tuesday\u2019s loss to Montreal.<\/p>\n
The veteran defenseman suffered the injury in the third period and did not return.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s going to be out,\u201d head coach Paul Maurice said.<\/p>\n
An important veteran on the blue line during Florida\u2019s back-to-back runs to the Stanley Cup in 2024 and 2025, Kulikov, who\u2019s been limited to just 19 games this season after initially suffering an upper-body injury on Oct. 9, has recorded 247 points (50G, 197A) in 1,037 career games.<\/p>\n
Kulikov is also the third Panther in the last few weeks to have his season ended by a broken finger.<\/p>\n
Evan Rodrigues suffered a broken finger on March 26, while Aaron Ekblad broke a finger on March 31.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the standard injury here now,\u201d Maurice said.<\/p>\n
With four games left in the regular season, the Panthers have had nearly 500 man games lost due to injury thus far.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just unbelievable what these guys have been through,\u201d Maurice said.<\/p>\n
With Kulikov\u2019s season over, the Panthers will need to recall a defenseman from the AHL.<\/p>\n
Loaned to the Charlotte Checkers on Sunday, Mikulas Hovorka could possibly be coming right back up.<\/p>\n
In three games this season, the 24-year-old rookie has recorded one blocked shot and three hits.<\/p>\n
With the Panthers set to visit the Ottawa Senators on Thursday, a decision should be made before then.<\/p>\n
Stay tuned to FloridaPanthers.com for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL \u2013 It\u2019s a bad time to be a finger if you play for the Florida Panthers. Already…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5102],"tags":[62,57,5141,5,4,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-547169","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\/116368583283845617","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547169","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=547169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}