The hits just keep coming for the Florida Panthers, and now they’re suffering injuries away from the rink too. On Wednesday, coach Paul Maurice announced that forward Eetu Luostarinen is expected to miss time after what he described as a “barbecuing mishap.”
Maurice said that Luostarinen suffered burns in the incident, but it wasn’t serious enough that he had to stay overnight in the hospital. Still, Luostarinen was burnt badly enough that Maurice labeled him “week-to-week,” and his return timeline may depend on when he’s comfortable wearing pads again.
“I’m gonna list him as week-to-week because we don’t have a lot of experience with this,” Maurice said. “Some of it’s when he comes back and feels comfortable putting the equipment on. He wasn’t in the hospital overnight. He did get seen by doctors in that vein.”
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Luostarinen joins a laundry list of Panthers on the shelf due to injury. At this point, Florida, currently 10-8-1 on the season, could field quite the starting lineup with its injury report.
With seven players out of the lineup, the Florida lineup will look very different in the coming weeks and months. Maurice said his team, the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion, is just trying to “survive” for now, and admitted that missing that number of bodies is “trouble” for any team.
Between Barkov, Tkachuk, Kulikov, and Luostarinen, the Panthers are down four players who were pivotal in them repeating as Stanley Cup champions last summer. The three forwards combined for 19 goals and 47 assists last postseason, and Kulikov played a key role in the team’s shutdown defense.
The Panthers will now have to adapt to keep their heads above water in a very competitive Eastern Conference. If they can stay in the fight until reinforcements arrive, they may be better for it.
“We won’t be dominant in a lot of games because of the personnel that’s out, but we’re staying in them,” Maurice said. “I think we’re getting better in some areas we weren’t even great in. We’re forced to adapt our style of hockey to the players that are in. Some of that adaptation we’ll get to keep. That’s the idea. We’re trying to do some things differently than we’ve done in the past.”
If there’s any good injury news for the Panthers, it’s that Tkachuk could start skating in the next couple of weeks before making his return in December.
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