With his career coming full circle, Panthers’ Dmitry Kulikov reflects on latest milestone
While the Florida Panthers’ five-game road trip ended with a whimper on Monday in a 3-1 loss to the Calgary Flames, the finale had special significance for one player.
Defenseman Dmitry Kulikov skated in his 900th career game on Monday.
“It has been a lot of games and I have had a lot of good teammates and a lot of good memories,” said Kulikov, who is playing in his 15th NHL season. “If you get to 900 games, you did not do it without help from your family, the support of your friends, the coaching staff, the medical guys, the equipment guys.”
It’s the latest milestone of a long hockey journey that came full circle this year.
Kulikov, 33, spent his first seven NHL seasons with Panthers after Florida picked him 14th overall in 2009 NHL Draft. That stretch included five years with Florida as one of the worst teams in the NHL and two years with first-round exits from the playoffs.
He spent the following seven years bouncing around the league with stops in Buffalo, Winnipeg, New Jersey, Edmonton, Minnesota, Anaheim and Pittsburgh before returning to Florida on a one-year deal this season. Outside of three seasons in Winnipeg, Kulikov spent no more than one season with any given team and changed teams midseason twice.
In Kulikov’s time away from Sunrise, the Panthers went from being consistently near the bottom of the league to one of the NHL’s annual contenders. Florida has been in the playoffs each of the past four seasons and is coming off a run to the Stanley Cup Final.
“When I joined the team, it was in more of a rebuilding stage,” Kulikov said. “There were some tough years. We didn’t win many games. Now, you can see the excitement around it with the fans and the team is doing well, winning some games. I think it’s brought a lot of attention to hockey in Florida in general. It’s great to see.”
On the season, Kulikov has eight assists — tied with Niko Mikkola for second-most among Florida defensemen and one shy of Oliver Ekman-Larsson for the team lead — in addition to ranking third on the team in hits (40) and fourth in blocked shots (38).
“This is an interesting guy because he plays a harder game every year,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice, who coached Kulikov in Winnipeg, said Monday. “When we had him in Winnipeg, he was coming off a really tough back injury that he suffered through in Buffalo. The player we have here is markedly better than the player I had in Winnipeg because he just had not healed yet.
“I was surprised by that number,” Maurice continued. “I would have thought 700 because he has been injured a bit. This is a tough guy. What I think is that he is the best pro version of himself because he works hard at getting better.”
He began the season as part of Florida’s second defense pairing with Mikkola when the Panthers were without two of their top players in Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour. Since those two returned last month, Kulikov has played on the third pairing with Ekman-Larsson — when he’s in the lineup. Kulikov has been a healthy scratch three times this season as Maurice tries to rotate in some of his other defensemen.
“He’s playing in a good spot. He’s got a real good partner, but he’s also going to have to make that adjustment of being in and out every once in a while,” Maurice said. “He’s handled that very well.”
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