Panthers’ Brad Marchand might need surgery. Where things stand
Brad Marchand’s season might be over.
The veteran Florida Panthers winger will see doctors this week to determine if he will need surgery for an injury he has been dealing with for most of the season, coach Paul Maurice said Monday.
The coach added that even if there isn’t surgery, he will still likely be sidelined “long-term” — “this isn’t going to be a couple of days,” Maurice said. “We’re into weeks.”
“We’re going to come up with a plan for him, as he’s been dealing with something for a couple of months,” Maurice added. “We’ve been able to maintain it, but it’s just a function of nine [games] and 15 [days], go to Italy [for the Olympics], come back, six [more games] in nine days. The thing that we’ve been able to avoid for the most part this year — I don’t know if this is fortunately, but we’ve had mostly catastrophic injuries that were long-term [but] we stayed out of the soft tissue issues that you see more from overuse than anything else. And then in the last two [weeks], especially for the Olympians, we’re seeing that creep in. We’re maintaining guys as best we possibly can. But Brad would be one that we’ll get a decision this week on what’s the best thing for him going forward.”
Marchand missed 10 of Florida’s final 15 games prior to the Winter Olympics, where he won a silver medal with Canada. He also was held out of two of Canada’s six games in Milan, Italy.
The 37-year-old forward, in the first season of a six-year deal that has an annual cap hit of $5.25 million, has been one of Florida’s top players this season when on the ice. He has 54 points (27 goals, 27 assists) in 52 games and was on the ice for an average of 17:44 per game.
“We were really pleased and quite surprised that we hadn’t run into this earlier,” Maurice said. “But we had had a handle on it where there were times where he didn’t play but kind of maintained it and came back in. We just got to the point on this road trip that it was never recovering and continuing to kind of get worse. So we’re hopeful that we got it early enough. We’ll know this week what it is.”
Marchand might not be the only Panthers veteran shut down this season with Florida all but assuredly missing the Stanley Cup playoffs. Florida president of hockey operations and general manager Bill Zito on Friday said the team will evaluate where players are from a health perspective and adjust ice time as needed down the stretch.
The Panthers made two acquisitions on Friday in forwards Vinnie Hinostroza and Cole Reinhardt that will help supplement the team’s forward group the rest of the way. Maurice said Hinostroza will draw into the lineup Tuesday when Florida (31-29-3) hosts the Detroit Red Wings (36-21-7) (7 p.m., Scripps Sports).
As for other injuries, Maurice gave the following updates on defenseman Seth Jones and forward Jonah Gadjovich, both of whom are on long-term injured reserve.
On Jones, who has been sidelined since fracturing his collarbone in the Winter Classic on Jan. 2: “He can take contact, but there’s some healing that has to go on that hasn’t happened yet.”
On Gadjovich, who had surgery in early November for an unspecified upper-body injury: “We believe he’s trending in the right direction. Our best case is that it’s maybe another week and then we can see him in the lineup, but we don’t know.”
This story was originally published March 9, 2026 at 12:39 PM.
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