Maurice: Ekblad ‘ready to go’ for Panthers in playoffs
The Florida Panthers will be at full strength when they begin the Stanley Cup Playoffs at 12:30 p.m. Sunday with their first-round series against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Panthers coach Paul Maurice said defenseman Aaron Ekblad, who missed the final six games of the regular season with a lower-body injury, is “ready to go” for the postseason.
“Pretty healthy,” Ekblad said after practice Saturday. “Excited to get going.”
Ekblad, the Panthers’ longest-tenured defenseman, played in only 51 games this season while dealing with a flurry of injuries. He missed the first 16 games while recovering from offseason shoulder surgery and had two other stints in which he missed at least two weeks. In that time, Ekblad produced 18 points (four goals, 14 assists), but his presence stabilizes Florida’s defense pairings, with Ekblad in the top pairing with Gustav Forsling and allowing Maurice to move Oliver Ekman-Larsson to the third pairing with Dmitry Kulikov. Niko Mikkola and Brandon Montour make up the second pairing.
During the playoffs last season, Ekblad played through “like five different injuries” as Maurice put it, and still managed to play in 20 games and log eight points (two goals, six assists).
Among those injuries were a broken foot in the first round and the dislocated shoulder. At one point, Ekblad also had to get tested for a concussion. He was just one of the many Panthers players who left the postseason battered and bruised.
“There was a whole bunch of that going on and that’s part of the learning process to go through about what players are willing to sacrifice for each other,” Maurice said. “Broken bones. Lots of muscle tears. Separated shoulders. Ankle sprains. Those are the hard things. It’s not the bruises and all the stuff that every player carries. It really sets a standard going forward of what players are going to do and the trust between them. They’re willing to sacrifice.”
The Panthers’ depth was severely tested throughout the playoffs last year. This time around, they have more players to help absorb any potential losses that might come their way.
“It takes every single guy and every single shift for the entire series,” Ekblad said. “There’s no easy ice. It’s damn near impossible to make it to that Final, let alone win. It takes everybody. It takes an entire group effort. We saw it last year. We came up short, but we’re gonna try to find a way back.”
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It’s like you don’t have to eat your vegetables. It’s just the good stuff that you want. It’s the best. There’s no motivating the team like, ‘How am I gonna get these guys on tonight?’ It’s done. I’ve just got to make sure I keep them all flying in the same direction. All of maybe the grinding days, the pulling teeth, the motivating that you’ve got to do to mold the team to get through 82 [regular season games], it’s done. You’re here. Now you can have some fun.” — Maurice on the excitement of the playoffs
THIS AND THAT
It looks like Ryan
A
Lomberg will be Florida’s 12th forward for Game 1 against the Lightning on Sunday. He practiced with fellow fourth liners Nick Cousins and Kevin Stenlund at practice on Saturday, pointing to the trio of Steven Lorentz, Jonah Gadjovich and Kyle Okposo being healthy scratches. When the team is at full strength, Maurice will rotate players from that quartet of Lomberg, Lorentz, Gadjovich and Okposo in and out of the lineup depending on what the team needs that night.
Even with Ekblad back, A
it does not appear that he will be on the power play. The Panthers’ top unit remains unchanged with Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, Carter Verhaeghe
and Montour. The second unit at practice the past two days has been Sam Bennett, Vladimir Tarasenko, Anton Lundell, Evan Rodrigues and Ekman-Larsson.
Jordan McPherson: 305-376-2129, @J_McPherson1126