Close to full strength, Panthers have ‘tough decisions’ to make with deep forwards group
Maxim Mamin has spent most of his season — at least when he has been in the lineup — skating on the Florida Panthers’ top line, next to Aleksander Barkov.
For the Panthers’ final practice before the second half began, the winger didn’t even get to crack the fifth line of forwards Florida used during its crowded session at FLA Live Arena. Instead, he wound up skating next to a defenseman during the Panthers’ rushes Tuesday in Sunrise.
Obviously, the plan won’t be for Mamin to play defense anytime soon. This is just the roster crunch Florida is dealing with, where a skater can go from the first line to entirely out of the picture in a moment’s notice.
“We have tough decisions It’s a day-to-day thing for us,” interim coach Andrew Brunette said Tuesday. “I don’t even think we got out of camp this healthy, so we’ve got a lot of bodies.”
As the Panthers got ready to begin the second half of their season Wednesday against the Carolina Hurricanes at PNC Arena, Brunette had enough forwards to fill five NHL-caliber lines and then some. Florida activated forwards Noel Acciari and Patric Hornqvist from injured reserve Wednesday, and still have Mamin sitting on the IR ready to return to the active roster whenever the Panthers are ready to use him again.
Hornqvist missed Florida’s last eight games before the All-Star break with an upper-body injury, and returned to skate with left wing Ryan Lomberg and center Eetu Luostarinen on the fourth line during the Panthers’ morning skate Wednesday in Raleigh, North Carolina. On the top line, Barkov was flanked by wingers Carter Verhaeghe and Anthony Duclair. On the second, All-Star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau played next to forwards Sam Bennett and Owen Tippett. For his third line, Brunette rolled out forwards Mason Marchment, Anton Lundell and Sam Reinhart.
“We’ve got five lines that would play on, I think, pretty much every team in the league,” Bennett said. “It just pushes every player to be at the top of their game every single night.”
It means Florida will have an inactive group including Mamin, Acciari, Frank Vatrano and Joe Thornton — all of whom are established NHL veterans and have combined for 570 career goals.
Mamin has the fewest of the bunch with eight and currently looks like the odd man out. Acciari is still easing his way back to a return after tearing a pectoral muscle in the preseason and Brunette said he’ll suit up at some point on this three-game road trip. Vatrano was actually tied for third on the team with 18 goals last season, and has been a healthy scratch more and more often in the last few weeks. Thornton, 42, is a future Hall of Famer, whose playing time has been monitored all year long.
For some players, it will be an easy sell to not have to play every night. For others, it will present a challenging situation. Brunette knows it.
“It’s a good problem to have, being that deep, but also, at times, it’s a lot of managing,” he said. “It’s going to be hard to manage everybody’s expectations, everybody’s desires to want to play. We’re going to have to ask guys to be a little bit selfless and look at the bigger picture of our group, and where we’re heading and we’re going to need everybody at some point.”
Olli Juolevi comes off IR
Defenseman Olli Juolevi was one of three injured Panthers to come off IR on Wednesday, joining Acciari and Hornqvist.
Like Acciari, Juolevi didn’t return to the lineup Wednesday, but Brunette said he expects him to play at some point on this trip, which concludes Sunday against the Chicago Blackhawks.
To create room on the 23-man roster, Florida placed defenseman Chase Priskie on IR with an unspecified injury Tuesday and moved Thornton to the IR with an unspecified injury Wednesday.
This story was originally published February 16, 2022 at 2:40 PM.
