Duclair looks better than ever following injury
There was relief in his return because even though Anthony Duclair trusted everything he did to get back from his torn left Achilles tendon, he couldn’t quite be certain it was all going to pay off until he finally suited up for the Panthers and dashed up and down the ice a few times in his first game.
“I didn’t really know what to expect,” the right wing admitted. “This is my first time being out longterm, and I didn’t know how the body would react.”
By the end of the first period of his first game last month, any of those concerns were gone. Duclair held up fine and, with an assist, was probably the single biggest bright spot for the Panthers in their otherwise-frustrating loss to the Sabres.
A few days later, he capped off a crucial win against the Lightning by scoring an empty-net goal, and he has kept building since playing 25 shifts in a loss to the Predators on Thursday and 22 in Florida’s 4-1 win against the Penguins on Saturday.
The production tells only a piece of the story, though. The eye test is imperfect, but Duclair is passing in the eyes of teammates and, most importantly, his coach.
“It does look different to me from my recollection of his game as an opposing coach and then from video,” Paul Maurice said Saturday. “There are way more elements to his game now than just his speed.”
The coach’s eyes aren’t deceiving him, both Duclair and some numbers agree. In his first game back, Duclair laid five hits on Buffalo — a single-game career high for the 27-yearold
Canadian — and he already has three blocks in four games after totaling only 38 in all of last season.
The forward is stronger than he has ever been, Duclair said, and it’s letting him play a different, more well-rounded style than he did for the first seven-plus years of his NHL career.
“I wanted to take that time to come back,” he said, “not only come back the same player, but better.”
The injury happened in the middle of the summer and immediately it was clear it would be devastating. At an offseason workout in Montreal, Duclair tore his left Achilles and he knew it was bad as soon as he felt it tear. He had surgery a few days later and went on the shelf. He knew it would keep him out for the majority of the 2022-23 NHL season.
Duclair admitted he “had some bad habits before,
which led to the injury.” He wasn’t totally diligent in taking care of his body to the extent a high-level athlete can — concerns about his work ethic dogged him throughout the first half of his career and are a big part of why he played for five teams in six years before he joined the Panthers in 2020 — and so he committed to changing things in the past seven-plus months, especially since he was unable to run or skate for a long stretch of his rehabilitation.
One result, he hopes, will be a more durable body. Another is already clear: He’s a more complete player than he was before the injury.
“He looks stronger and bigger. He had six months to work out and he worked out hard,” Maurice said. “He’s powerful on the ice and he’s doing things — taking pucks to the net,
driving out of corners — that I don’t think was necessarily part of his game.”
These new components make it easier to play him top-six minutes in any given game. Even in his first few years, including his 31-goal season with the Panthers last year, Duclair had his ups and downs, sometimes playing next to All-Star center Aleksander Barkov on the top line and sometimes getting dropped all the way to the fourth. His defense was a work in progress, and if opponents sat back to try to deny breakaways and counteract his speed, Duclair wasn’t always suited to play in other styles.
It still has been only four games, but this version of Duclair — a more willing defender and less reliant on getting rush chances — is noticeably different and it’s why Maurice will again have him playing on the top line Tuesday when the
Panthers (31-27-6) host the Vegas Golden Knights (38-19-6) at 7 p.m. at FLA Live Arena.
Florida touted Duclair as its major trade-deadline acquisition — especially since the Panthers were the only team not to make any moves after the calendar flipped to 2023 — and as cliche as it is, it’s almost true.
The trade deadline is typically a time for postseason contenders to add a new piece to their mix and hope the new addition will help spark a run. If Florida can make up its three-point gap in the final 18 games to make the
2023 Stanley Cup playoffs, Duclair, as the only thing to really change for the Panthers since the start of the year, will deserve a ton of credit.
“He’s been outstanding,” general manager Bill Zito said Friday. “What he’s experiencing is he comes off and he feels like, I did it again, and it’s not pain. It’s just discomfort with the scar tissue and for him to do that, it’s a big deal.”