FORT LAUDERDALE \u2013 Jonah Gadjovich will get a chance to start fresh next season.<\/p>\n
Injured in a 3-0 win over the Vegas Golden Knights on Oct. 25, the Florida Panthers forward underwent surgery on his neck in November.<\/p>\n
Despite returning to practice in January, he was unable to get back to 100% before Game 82.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was pretty close a couple times and then would have a setback,\u201d Panthers President of Hockey Operations & General Manager Bill Zito said during the team\u2019s end-of-season media availability at Baptist Health IcePlex on Thursday. \u201cThrough it all, he\u2019s been a wonderful teammate.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 10 games prior to his injury, Gadjovich, a key piece of last summer\u2019s run to a second straight Stanley Cup, had recorded three assists and 30 hits.<\/p>\n
A spark plug on the fourth line, the 27-year-old veteran logged three points (2G, 1A), 63 hits and 11 blocked shots in 16 games during last year\u2019s playoffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s just such a good guy,\u201d Zito said. \u201cHe really battled.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the Panthers having more than 450 man games lost due to injury, Gadjovich is one of many players that should benefit from an extended summer.<\/p>\n
A veteran of 170 games, Gadjovich inked a two-year contract extension back in October that will kick in at the start of the 2026-27 campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m proud of him for making sure that he\u2019s right,\u201d Zito said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT LAUDERDALE \u2013 Jonah Gadjovich will get a chance to start fresh next season. Injured in a 3-0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[5],"class_list":{"0":"post-554709","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-hockey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116421510013019297","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554709","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=554709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}