The Florida Panthers find themselves scrambling to shore up their defense as they continue their six-game road trip against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Thursday.
Defenseman Dmitry Kulikov is deemed week-to-week after sustaining an apparent right arm injury in the first period of Florida’s 4-2 setback to the New York Islanders on Sunday. The loss was the Panthers’ third in the first four games of their trek, with two of those coming after squandering two-goal leads in the third period.
“Structurally, I’m very comfortable with our game,” Florida head coach Paul Maurice said. “We are correct in that part of our game. I think foot speed, some of the other teams have an advantage on us right now. We can play a little faster.”
The Panthers recalled defenseman Tobias Bjornfot from Charlotte of the American Hockey League on Tuesday to replace Kulikov. The 23-year-old Bjornfot was summoned from the AHL in January with Florida attempting to absorb the absences of top-pair defensemen in Aaron Ekblad and Niko Mikkola.
“It’s nice to have a guy that you bring up that everybody knows when he hops into the room and he gets on the plane,” Maurice said of Bjornfot.
“This is normal for him. His games for us have been very good. He’s one of those that falls into that category of a guy that when you send him down, you feel bad because he hasn’t done anything wrong on the ice. His play has been solid for us. We just have had depth at that position while he’s been here. We feel very comfortable with him in our lineup.”
The Panthers (41-24-3, 85 points) are anything but comfortable, however, given their holes in their lineup.
Florida previously placed star Matthew Tkachuk on long-term injured reserve with an apparent groin injury. Fellow forward Brad Marchand is week-to-week with an upper-body injury, while Ekblad is suspended for the remainder of the regular season in addition to two playoff games for violating the terms of the NHL/NHLPA Performance Enhancing Substances Program.
While the Panthers have lost two in a row, the Blue Jackets (31-28-8, 70 points) have struggled to find their offense while dropping four straight games. Columbus followed up shutout losses to the Vegas Golden Knights and New York Rangers with a 2-1 setback to the New Jersey Devils on Monday.
To be fair, the Blue Jackets were snakebitten by Jake Allen (45 saves) — and head coach Dean Evason was more than willing to praise his charges after the contest.
“It was freaking awesome,” Evason said. “Did we get the result? No. Did we play the right way? Do we believe that this is the turning point? Do we believe that this, not only the (third) period, the game, turns us around and we’re ready to go forward? Yeah, 100 percent.
“We had so many unbelievable opportunities. We played the right way, we played hard, we played disciplined, we played within the system structurally. We just didn’t get the result.”
Mathieu Olivier scored in the third period to halt the team’s scoreless drought of 182 minutes, 55 seconds. He has six goals in his last 10 games.
The Blue Jackets, however, were shut out in their last encounter with Florida on March 6. They also lost 4-3 to the Panthers on Oct. 15 in Columbus.
–Field Level Media
