- Florida Panthers team reporter Jameson Olive reports that captain Aleksander Barkov will not travel with the team to Nashville as he recovers from a lower-body injury. Head coach Paul Maurice has said that he is hopeful Barkov will be able to play on Wednesday against the Arizona Coyotes. While the Panthers have a strong team regardless, they’re certainly an improved group when Barkov is healthy. The former Selke and Lady Byng Trophy winner has played exceptional two-way hockey this season and has scored 46 points in 40 games.
Panthers Rumors
Florida Panthers Recall Mackie Samoskevich
The Florida Panthers have once again recalled Mackie Samoskevich, according to Florida Hockey Now’s George Richards. Unlike some prior recalls, Samoskevich actually has a clear path to playing some NHL games in this recall, as the team’s incumbent fourth-line right winger William Lockwood is currently serving a three-game suspension.
The Panthers reassigned Rasmus Asplund back to the AHL yesterday, and have now brought up Samoskevich to take his place on the active roster. With Lockwood suspended, Samoskevich could play on the Panthers’ third or fourth line at the right wing positon.
Samoskevich, 21, is the 2021 24th overall pick who is currently playing his rookie season as a full-time pro player. Samoskevich spent the last two seasons at the University of Michigan, scoring 43 points in 39 games in his final run there.
So far this season Samoskevich has been a quality AHLer, scoring 11 goals and 26 points in 32 games. He’s still waiting on his first NHL point, and now with this recall he could very well earn it before likely heading back to AHL Charlotte.
Florida Panthers Send Down Rasmus Asplund
- Sticking in the Atlantic Division, the Florida Panthers have loaned forward Rasmus Asplund to their AHL affiliate, the Charlotte Checkers, per a team announcement. Asplund did not suit up for the Panthers over his emergency loan roster placement, but will return to a Checkers team where he has had some success this season, scoring four goals and 19 points in 33 games.
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William Lockwood Receives Three-Game Suspension
8:08 PM: Per an announcement from the league, the Department of Player Safety has decided to suspend Lockwood for the next three games.
11:38 AM: Early in last night’s game against Minnesota, Panthers winger William Lockwood hit goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury while the netminder was out to play the puck behind the net. The play has drawn the attention of the Department of Player Safety who announced (Twitter link) that Lockwood will have a disciplinary hearing today for goalie interference.
The incident occurred just 2:15 into the game where he received a minor for goalie interference plus a roughing minor after the fact. On his next shift, Lockwood dropped the gloves with Brandon Duhaime and had to helped off the ice afterward; his night came to an end with just 26 seconds of playing time and nine penalty minutes. Fleury, meanwhile, stayed in until just past the midway mark before exiting with an upper-body injury.
Lockwood has played in a career-high 23 games with Florida this season and has been a fixture on the fourth line in those appearances as he’s averaging just over eight minutes a night of playing time while recording one assist. Should he receive any supplemental discipline, it would be the 25-year-old’s first time being fined or suspended by the league.
Aleksander Barkov Absent From Morning Skate, Update Expected Later Friday
- Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov was absent from morning skate today as he continues to rehab a lower-body injury, said the AP’s Colby Guy. Head coach Paul Maurice is expected to issue an update on Barkov’s status later Friday. The 28-year-old missed Wednesday’s overtime loss to the Red Wings, his fourth absence of the season. He missed a late October tilt against the Sharks with illness, while a knee injury kept him out of two games in November. His 35 assists in 40 games lead the Panthers.
Barkov Out Tonight With Lower-Body Injury
Teams with Bally Sports-branded channels for their regional sports network provider are nearing some certainty. The brand’s parent organization, Diamond Sports, has agreed in principle to a deal with Amazon, Sinclair Broadcasting Group and other debt holders to finance a restructuring of the company as it continues in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, they announced today (via Sportico’s Brendan Coffey). The restructuring includes the streaming rights to Bally Sports channels being transferred to Amazon Prime Video, although details of the move are scarce. Preliminary information implies that this will not affect the games’ national out-of-market availability on ESPN+ in the United States but rather provide a paid streaming option for those within their team’s TV market who do not receive their Bally Sports channel on linear TV. Affected teams include the Blue Jackets, Blues, Ducks, Hurricanes, Kings, Lightning, Panthers, Predators, Red Wings, Stars, and Wild, although all their broadcasting rights are set to revert back to the NHL at the end of 2023-24.
In other afternoon notes:
- Devils winger Timo Meier is on the ice with the team for morning skate and is likely to return tonight against the Canadiens, team reporter Amanda Stein relays. Meier had missed six games with an abdominal injury and will be activated off IR in the next few hours. The 27-year-old has missed 13 combined games due to injury in his first full season in the Garden State, putting up a rather pedestrian 9-6–15 stat line in 28 games when healthy, along with a team-worst -16 rating. He is an important returning piece for a Devils team that’s also without Jack Hughes and Ondřej Palát on offense, though, as they try, and grab hold of a playoff spot in the Metropolitan Division. With the move to activate Meier, the Devils have also assigned forward Shane Bowers to their AHL affiliate the Utica Comets.
- Florida Panthers play-by-play broadcaster Doug Plagens tweeted that Panthers center Aleksander Barkov will not dress tonight when the team takes on the Detroit Red Wings. The 28-year-old missed the final few minutes of Florida’s overtime loss to the Anaheim Ducks on Monday and is said to be dealing with a lower-body injury that head coach Paul Maurice called short-term. Barkov is having another terrific season at both ends of the ice with 11 goals and 35 assists in 40 games, to go along with solid work in the defensive zone.
Evening Notes: Barkov, Fleury, Lindstrom
Florida Panthers head coach Paul Maurice shared that Aleksander Barkov had a lower-body injury that tightened up on him in the third period, leading to Maurice benching the top centerman for the rest of the game. The injury has been labeled as minor but it is expected to hold Barkov out of the team’s Wednesday night game as well.
Barkov is having yet another productive season, ranked second on the Panthers in scoring with 45 points in 39 games. He’s behind only Sam Reinhart, who has 31 goals and 54 points of his own. Barkov is in the second season of an eight-year contract that carries a $10MM cap hit. He’s played in all but three of Florida’s games up to this point.
Other notes from around the league:
- Legendary goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury has officially moved into second on the all-time wins list, winning his 552nd game with a 5-0 shutout over the New York Islanders. Fleury is now sat behind just Martin Brodeur. Unfortunately, Fleury is still a long way off of Brodeur’s crown, needing 141 more wins to take the top spot.
- Top 2024 NHL Draft prospect Cayden Lindstrom is set to miss four-to-six weeks after undergoing surgery. He’s been placed on injured reserve for the Medicine Hat Tigers. Lindstrom is projected to be a top-10 pick by many, boasting 27 goals and 46 points in 32 WHL games, and was recently ranked third among North American skaters in the NHL Central Scouting Service’s midyear rankings.
Sam Reinhart To Prioritize Term In Extension Talks With Panthers
In recent memory, few have taken advantage of their pending UFA status like Panthers winger Sam Reinhart. The 28-year-old has exploded in his third season in South Florida, producing at a 61-goal, 106-point pace through his first 42 games. He’ll shatter his previous career highs of 33 goals and 82 points, set during his first campaign with the Panthers in 2021-22.
That production has elevated Reinhart to the title of the league’s best pending UFA, at least with Maple Leafs winger William Nylander off the market. As such, most expected Reinhart’s camp to push for a deal closer to his Toronto counterpart’s eight-year, $92MM deal that carries a $11.5MM AAV. However, in his latest for The Athletic, Pierre LeBrun says that won’t necessarily be the case.
Firstly, he stresses that only preliminary extension discussions between Panthers GM Bill Zito and Reinhart’s agent, Newport Sports’ Craig Oster, have taken place. But, in LeBrun’s words, Reinhart “really, really wants to stay in South Florida,” and that could cause a potential extension to come in below the $10MM-plus AAV mark that some are expecting. While tax advantages in contract signings with certain teams are generally overblown in public discourse, there is a documented history of players taking discounts on market value in no-income-tax states like Florida, Dallas and Tennessee that LeBrun points out.
LeBrun also doesn’t believe Zito would be willing to entertain a deal that stretches into the $10MM range, given the team’s salary structure. The team’s longer-term commitments to their stars are clearly laid out – captain Aleksander Barkov carries a $10MM cap hit through 2030, last season’s team MVP Matthew Tkachuk carries a $9.5MM cap hit for the same length, and starting netminder Sergei Bobrovsky carries a $10MM cap hit through 2026. He won’t be willing to give Reinhart a deal that eclipses any of the above.
However, despite Reinhart being likely to receive offers of $10MM-plus per year from other teams on the open market, LeBrun posits Reinhart may be amicable to Zito’s desires. That’s because he’s likely to prioritize contract length in his discussions, says LeBrun, and it’s easy to see why. While he’s got ten seasons and over 650 NHL games under his belt, he’s never signed a contract longer than three years, and he’s now wrapping up his third deal signed after his entry-level contract expired in 2018.
So, if Zito is willing to go eight years on an extension, that could get Reinhart locked in at a cheaper price than most expected after his breakout year. There’s some recent precedence in terms of team salary structure that could offer insight into what Reinhart’s final extension could look like, too.
Take the Canadiens last summer, who needed an extension for star RFA sniper Cole Caufield after the completion of his entry-level contract. While his 2022-23 campaign was nearly halved due to a shoulder injury, he produced at a 46-goal pace through his 46 appearances. Given he was just in his third NHL season on a rebuilding team, few would have batted an eye if his extension was signed in the $8MM-$9.5MM range per season.
Instead, he took an eight-year deal with a slight discount in the cap hit department at $7.85MM. It was $25K less per season than captain Nick Suzuki, who Canadiens GM Kent Hughes obviously believes should be the team’s highest-paid forward at this stage in their rebuild. While Suzuki and Caufield are a younger duo, it wouldn’t be a far-fetched comparison to project that difference onto the potential difference in cap hits between Reinhart and Tkachuk. Could an eight-year deal worth $9.25MM per season be enough to keep Reinhart from heading to market on July 1?
Zito has a busy few months ahead of him. He also needs to hold extension talks with defensemen Gustav Forsling and Brandon Montour, who are currently locked into a combined bargain price of $6.17MM. Oliver Ekman-Larsson, who leads Panthers defensemen in points at the halfway mark of the season, is also a pending UFA earning only $2.25MM. Getting Reinhart done for seven figures per season would open a precious few thousand dollars to devote to the future of their defense corps.
Dmitry Kulikov Considered A Game-Time Decision
Continuing with their five-game homestand this week, the Florida Panthers may be without defenseman Dmitry Kulikov tomorrow night against the Anaheim Ducks (X Link). It is unclear what exactly is plaguing Kulikov, but he only managed a tad under 14 minutes of ice time in the team’s most recent loss to the New Jersey Devils.
If Kulikov is unable to play on Monday, it likely means that Josh Mahura will join the bottom-pairing on defense, after serving as a healthy scratch since December 16th. Although there is an argument to be made that Mahura is ultimately the more well-rounded defenseman comparatively, Kulikov’s recent work on the penalty kill has given the Panthers little choice but to put him in the lineup.
Latest On Sam Reinhart Contract Talks
With Toronto Maple Leafs forward William Nylander now locked into a long-term contract extension, Florida Panthers forward Sam Reinhart now appears to be the top free agent who could potentially be available on this summer’s free agent market. But he may not even get there. Reinhart told Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli that discussions are “ongoing” with the Panthers on a contract extension, and the direction of those talks is “definitely positive.”