As Panthers’ Petry reflects on 1,000 career games, he has another goal in mind now
Jeff Petry never thought he would be in the NHL this long.
“Fortunate to play one” game, the veteran defenseman said.
He has played plenty more than that.
On Monday, Petry skated in his 1,000th career NHL game during the Florida Panthers’ 8-5 win against the Vancouver Canucks. Petry, a Michigan native who turns 38 next month, is the 409th skater in NHL history and just 28th U.S.-born defenseman to achieve the milestone. His four sons — Boyd, Barrett, Bowen and Blake — read out the lineup card in the dressing room pregame.
The Panthers will present him with his silver stick, awarded to players who hit the 1,000-game mark, before their home game against the New Jersey Devils on Thursday (7 p.m., Scripps Sports).
“It’s something to be proud of,” Petry said. “Just enjoy it. It’s a good personal accomplishment, and you can be proud of that.”
Petry is proud of his career, one that is in its 16th season and included stops in Edmonton, Montreal, Pittsburgh and Detroit before signing a one-year deal with the back-to-back defending Stanley Cup champion Panthers.
While the personal milestone is one he will always have, he wants to do his part to help the Panthers continue accomplishing history on a team level.
That would come by Florida winning its third — and Petry’s first — Stanley Cup this season, a feat that would make the Panthers the first franchise in NHL history to win three consecutive Stanley Cups since the start of the NHL’s salary cap era (beginning with the 2005-06 season).
“You just want to make sure that you’re playing a team game,” said Petry, who has 390 career points (96 goals, 294 assists) in his career and five assists so far this season with the Panthers. “There are a lot of players in here who have accomplished the ultimate dream, and they want to do it again. What I am building to this season is to reach that.
“Obviously, you see what they’ve accomplished over the last four years,” Petry continued, “and that’s something that every kid or active player that plays in this league dreams of. So I’m doing whatever I can to help build to get the team to a spot that at the end of the year that you’re having that good feeling.”
Petry’s role in the Florida lineup is similar to a few other Panthers pickups the past few seasons — a veteran playing on a one-year deal to handle a role on the third defense pair. He adds experience and offense to the bottom of the lineup but isn’t necessarily needed to be relied on for major minutes. Oliver Ekman-Larsson had that role in the 2023-24 campaign. Nate Schmidt was there in 2024-25. Now, it’s Petry.
“Very impressive,” fellow defenseman Seth Jones said of Petry’s 1,000 games. “It says a lot about the player you are on the ice, the consistency that you can play with, not getting injured and being able to be available in the lineup every night for your team and then obviously the character. I think when you hit a plateau like that, you obviously demand and command respect everyone understands what you’ve been through and the grind you’ve been through for 15-plus years to get to that point.”
Panthers coach Paul Maurice echoed that sentiment. While other milestones around the league might be more impressive — Alex Ovechkin continuing to extend his NHL-leading scoring mark after hitting 900 goals earlier this season or even Brad Marchand hitting 1,000 points last week — the games played milestones are ones every NHL player can chase.
“It’s one of those stats that’s player-respected above a lot more,” Maurice said. “We’ve seen some great milestones — Brad 1,000 points, Alex Ovechkin’s 900th goal — and those are incredibly incredible milestones and they’re respected. But there’s also a section of the league that’s never going to be able to do that. But 1,000 games for a defenseman first of all means you’ve played in the best league in the world, and you’ve survived it. You’ve played in pain. You’ve played with separated shoulders, broken feet, all those kinds of hard things, and you didn’t let your teammates down. You’ve played at a high enough level to play for a very long time.”
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