Good news for Panthers’ Ekblad and Montour. Plus lineup notes for game against Kraken

For the first time all season, defensemen Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour were with the main Florida Panthers group during the team’s optional morning skate ahead of Saturday’s 6 p.m. game against the Seattle Kraken.

They’ll take another significant step in their return from offseason surgeries on Sunday.

Coach Paul Maurice said Ekblad and Montour will take part in the team’s Sunday practice before the Panthers head out on their three-game road trip to Boston (Monday), Detroit (Thursday) and Chicago (Saturday).

The defensemen, who will also join the team on the trip, will wear non-contact sweaters during the practice session, but just the fact that they are being integrated into the full practice is noticeable progress after both had offseason shoulder surgery.

“Tomorrow will be good,” Maurice said Saturday. “Because tomorrow will be the first practice. We’ll have nine D on the ice, but we’re gonna get quite a bit faster and a little bit bigger with those two guys out there. And you see that. You put two guys with the elite things that they do — Aaron’s range, for sure, and his puck ability and then just Brandon’s pure speed on breakouts and things like that — it just changes the way you look.”

So far this season, Ekblad and Montour have solely skated in a separate group, away from the team setting, with former teammate Patric Hornqvist involved in the on-ice drills.

It’s worth noting that they are still a bit away from returning to a game setting. The initial timeline for both returning was mid-December, but it looks like it might move up slightly — possibly being back by the end of November. Montour is about a week ahead of Ekblad, according to Maurice, just based on the fact that Montour had surgery a week before Ekblad.

“There’s a window,” Maurice said. “I think their injuries were kind of four-to-six month windows. There’s a five-month window, so the doctors would have to sign off, but they’re closing in over the next two-and-a-half weeks from possibly being available toward the end of [next month].”

Bennett out, Kulikov in

As for Florida’s lineup on Saturday, defenseman Dmitry Kulikov will draw into the lineup despite missing the past two days of practice with an illness.

Center Sam Bennett, who returned to practice Thursday, did not skate Friday and then was on the ice for the optional skate Saturday, will not play against the Kraken.

“He’s close,” Maurice said of Bennett, “but we’ve invested now three weeks to healing this up. He skated and he was a little bit sore today. We’ll leave him at day to day, but he’s not far off.”

Florida Panthers projected lines and pairings

FORWARD LINES

Sam Reinhart - Aleksander Barkov - Evan Rodrigues

Carter Verhaeghe - Eetu Luostarinen - Matthew Tkachuk

Ryan Lomberg - Anton Lundell - Nick Cousins

Steven Lorentz - Kevin Stenlund - William Lockwood

DEFENSE PAIRINGS

Gustav Forsling - Oliver Ekman-Larsson

Niko Mikkola - Dmitry Kulikov

Josh Mahura - Uvis Balinskis

GOALTENDERS

Sergei Bobrovsky

Anthony Stolarz

Jordan McPherson

Miami Herald

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Jordan McPherson covers the Miami Hurricanes and Florida Panthers for the Miami Herald. He attended the University of Florida and covered the Gators athletic program for five years before joining the Herald staff in December 2017.