When Stephen Weiss takes the ice at the BankAtlantic Center on Thursday, it will be a memorable moment for a franchise that has struggled to produce them recently. The game against the Minnesota Wild will be Weiss’ 614th in a Panthers’ jersey, breaking Radek Dvorak’s all-time record.

If coach Kevin Dineen had his way, however, Weiss would not be passing Dvorak just yet. Dineen said Weiss’ drive to compete has pushed him to play on several occasions when perhaps he should not have. One game in particular sticks out to Dineen, when Weiss was questionable with a medical condition and Dineen told him twice that he would not play. After warmups, Weiss came into Dineen’s office with once last plea:

“Look, I want to do this.”

Weiss played that night, and with a few seconds left in the game, he slid out and blocked a point-blank slap shot to protect a one-goal lead.

“When you see that he was very desperate to play that night under adverse circumstances,” Dineen said. “That’s a great reflection of his character.”

Weiss is the only player left on the Panthers’ roster from the 2001-2002 season, when he scored one goal in seven games after getting called up in April. That goal came in Weiss’ first game, on April 3, 2002, in a win over the Pittsburgh Penguins. It was Weiss’ 19th birthday.

Weiss said his first game was one of the easier games of his career, but the next six were significantly harder, an indication of how difficult it would be to sustain a career in the NHL. After bouncing around for the next few years, alternating between Florida, San Antonio, and Chicago, where he spent the lockout year playing for the AHL Wolves, Weiss has been a mainstay in Sunrise since 2005. He is in his 10th year in the NHL, all with the Panthers.

“It’s been a long road,” said Weiss, chosen by the Panthers as the fourth pick overall in the 2001 NHL Draft. “But for the most part, I’m very happy to still be here and seeing this team get closer to where it needs to be.”

The soft-spoken Weiss is an alternate captain, and is heralded for his locker room presence. He has mentored several of the Panthers’ younger players, in particular fellow center Shawn Matthias. Both Weiss and Matthias are from outside Toronto, and both played in the Ontario Hockey League before the NHL.

“It’s been hard for [Weiss], but he stuck it out and he’s never asked to be traded and never asked to leave,” Matthias said. “I think that’s pretty cool as a player to do that. I would like to do the same as him and follow in his footsteps. He’s the face of this franchise, and I’m sure he will be for a lot longer.”

Weiss said he grew up a fan of Steve Yzerman, who played for Detroit for two decades, and he always wanted to stay with one team throughout his entire career.

While he does not control what happens to him over the next few years, Weiss knows he has unfinished business with the Panthers.

“What will be, will be over the next few years, we’ll see,” Weiss said. “But I don’t want to leave until we get this thing going in the right direction and play some playoff hockey.”

• Ed Jovanovski practiced for the second day in a row after returning from surgery on his broken right hand, and Dineen called him a “possibility” for Thursday’s contest against the Wild. Jason Garrison also took part in Wednesday’s practice, but Dineen does not expect him to be ready for Minnesota.