Panthers Prove The Old Adage That Hockey Players Are Tougher Than The Rest
Florida's players played with an absurd amount of high-profile injuries during the Playoffs...
Hockey players are just freaking built different.
Okay, that is hardly a new revelation. For anyone who watches the NHL - even on a casual basis - we all know that these warriors are much more than just mere mortals.
What they put their bodies through during the course of a gruelling 82-game war of attrition is admirable enough, but that doesn’t come close to the kind of punishing, gruesome and sometimes crippling ailments NHL players grit their teeth through when we arrive at the most important time of the year.
The Stanley Cup Playoffs.
And the Florida Panthers have now become a shining example of what players put their bodies through in order to taste ultimate success.
As has become tradition in the National Hockey League, once a team is eliminated from the postseason, a locker room cleanout day will take place in which players and coaches will speak to the media. It is when the Head Coach addresses journalists that we normally learn what insane ailments certain players were attempting to play through over a significant amount of time.
Well, the Panthers have taken that to the next level.
If you haven’t heard, Florida was pretty banged up en route to reaching the Stanley Cup Final in what was a magical, almost fairytale run that very few predicted after what transpired during the regular season.
After all, the Panthers were the 8th seed, the last team to punch their Playoff ticket. They took out the top seed in the Boston Bruins who had just come off a historic regular season. They also took care of business against the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Carolina Hurricanes, two absolutely loaded teams bang in the middle of their respect win-now windows. However, the Panthers eventually ran out of gas and the absurd list of grisly injuries this team was contending with ultimately played a huge factor in why they were absolutely beaten up on by the Vegas Golden Knights in the Stanley Cup Final.
You need an element of puck luck in order to win in the postseason, but you also need a lot of health luck too and, unfortunately, the Panthers’ luck ran out in that latter department.
Although, let’s get it right here, the Golden Knights were one of the best teams in hockey all year long and, as they proved throughout their 4-1 series win, they were fitting Stanley Cup Champions.
Anyway, for those of you not aware, these are just some of the eye-popping injuries the Panthers have made public in the days since the Stanley Cup Final came to a close:
Most notably, star forward Matthew Tkachuk, who put this Panthers team on his back and dragged them across the finishing line at times during the postseason, suffered a broken sternum during Game 3 after taking a crushing hit from Vegas grinder Keegan Kolesar. However, while such an injury would keep most mere mortals in bed, Tkachuk played on through the pain and scored the game-tying goal in the final minutes to send the contest to Overtime. And, although he was limited, he did play in Game 4 before being forced to sit out of Game 5. Florida Head Coach Paul Maurice revealed that other people had to help Tkachuk put his gear on, while his young brother Brady had to help him get out of bed and dress him just to get him to the rink. That’s adding a whole new layer of meaning to the word toughness.
Veteran defenseman Aaron Ekblad also took it to the extreme by playing with a multitude of different injuries. He battled with a broken foot, two shoulder dislocations and a torn oblique muscle. And he managed to score in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final. I mean, that’s just insane.
Brandon Montour, who had himself one hell of a postseason with 13 points (8 G, 5 A) in 21 games, as well as becoming a Dad for the first time during the Stanley Cup Final, played with a torn labrum.
Hard-nosed defenseman Radko Gudas took just one single period off for a high-ankle sprain, an injury that normally takes around six weeks to recover from.
Eetu Luostarinen tried to play through the pain of a broken tibia as long as he could, while Sam Bennett was also dealing with a pretty significant but undisclosed injury.
There aren’t even enough words to describe the sheer amount of courage those players had to have to even attempt to play through some of those horrific ailments.
Again, hockey players are just built different.
There will be plenty of others on that Panthers roster who played through the pain barrier throughout the postseason, too. After all, general wear and tear is common during the latter stages of a regular season and once the Playoffs begin in any sport. You can bet a large amount of money that there are a slew of Golden Knights players currently reaching for the icepacks to help soothe battered and bruised bodies.
Although, it has to be said, the pain of battle is somewhat softened by the euphoric highs of victory.
But, and although Vegas hasn’t made public its list of battle war wounds just yet due to all the celebrating that is currently going on in Sin City, common sense just dictates that a plethora of Golden Knights players would have also been battling through various issues.
We know about Mark Stone’s very public injury hell. The Vegas Captain has recently undergone two back surgeries in an excruciating nine-month period. And, according to Sportsnet’s NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman, “Mark Stone remains seriously injured and could be in and out of the lineup for the rest of his career.”
Before we proceed, however, I think that statement has been overblown slightly. I don’t think Stone’s career is in jeopardy as some are making out in the wake of Friedman’s comments. Rather, the Golden Knights are just going to have to be careful with Stone during the regular season, apply some load management and sit him out of certain regular season games to make sure his body is ready to go for the Playoffs. That’s all.
After all, there isn’t a single person on planet earth who could watch Stone throughout Vegas’ run and suggest he’s unable to play anymore. He was their heartbeat, their driving force, their leader in every sense of the word and he finished the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs with 24 points (11 G, 13 A). Stone also had some huge moments in the Stanley Cup Final, including scoring a hat-trick in the Cup-clinching Game 5 win.
So no need to panic Vegas fans.
Jack Eichel is another player who almost certainly battled with stuff too. The two-way star, like Stone, underwent pretty major surgery to solve a neck issue not that long ago and we all feared the worse and took a collective deep breathe when Eichel was absolutely lit up by Tkachuk in Game 2, holding his neck as he left the ice and went to the locker room. As we all know now, Eichel not only returned in that same game but he also claimed a primary assist on a Jonathan Marchessault goal. There’s no doubt though that Eichel probably would have been dealing with soreness at the very least for the remainder of the series.
Again, general wear and tear and the odd broken bone and battered limb is normal at this time of year for hockey players. Ask any NHL’er, past or current, who have had the honor of playing in a Stanley Cup Final and they will tell you that they were far from 100% percent healthy and were almost certainly battling through something.
Hockey players being incredible athletes who can full on sprint through the pain barrier is hardly a secret, after all.
However, in saying that, the Florida Panthers’ locker room looks like a war-time infirmary right now and the fact that they were able to reach the Stanley Cup Final with a slew of their players doing it on one leg is beyond amazing. And, the fact that a lot of those same players won’t be ready for the start of the 2023-24 season and may need surgery should tell you just how gravely beaten up that team was. And how committed to the cause they really were.
I said it at the top of this article and I’ll say it again - hockey players are just freaking built different.
And the Panthers and what they went through this postseason can serve as ultimate proof of that.
