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The Florida Panthers took the ice for a full team practice on Saturday in Fort Lauderdale.
It was the first day of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and while the first games of the postseason would kick off elsewhere, the Panthers still have a few days to get right for Game 1 against Tampa Bay.
As Florida continues preparing for what they hope is a repeat run to the Stanley Cup Final, there was a welcomed addition to their practice group that hadn’t been seen in that setting for quite a while.
For the first time since mid-February, All-Star forward Matthew Tkachuk joined his Panthers teammates for a full team practice.
He was wearing a white jersey, signifying a top six forward role, and skated on a line with Sam Bennett and Mackie Samoskevich.
Afterwards, Panthers Head Coach Paul Marice said he liked what he saw, in a limited capacity.
“Matthew looked like Matthew,” Maurice said. “It was a special teams day, so there’s not a lot of contact, not a lot of five-man moving, but it was a good day for where we’re at.”
Saturday was a step in the right direction.
It keeps Tkachuk on track to join the Panthers for a game sometime this week.
Now he’ll need to rest and recover from this skate, come back on Sunday and, hopefully, continue on the recovery path that’s been laid out.
“He looked fine, but it wasn’t a heavy enough day, or from a duration point of view, long enough to make a game assessment on him,” Maurice said. “We’ll see how it comes back in tomorrow and put the whole group back on the ice on Monday.”
Other Florida forward lines during Saturday’s practice included the traditional top line of Sasha Barkov centering Sam Reinhart and Carter Verhaeghe, while newcomer Brad Marchand continued on the Anton Lundell, Eetu Luostarinen line that he looked quite good with toward the end of the regular season.
Jesper Boqvist and Evan Rodrigues flanked Nico Sturm on what appeared to be the fourth line, and Tomas Nosek centered A.J. Greer and Jonah Gadjovich on the fifth line.
In terms of that special teams work Maurice mentioned, Tkachuk did skate on Florida’s top power play unit along with Barkov, Reinhart, Samoskevich and Seth Jones.
The second unit included Bennett, Marchand, Verhaeghe, Rodrigues and Schmidt.
The impact of having a forward group that includes Tkachuk, Bennett and Marchand is something that has been widely discussed since the Trade Deadline.
Whenever Tkachuk makes his debut, assuming there are no injuries before that, it’ll be the first time all three are playing together.
Whether or not they ever end up on the same line, it’s still got to be incredibly intimidating for opposing players to think about.
Tkachuk and Bennett already perfectly personified the style of hockey Florida wants to play, and adding Marchand to the mix should be like adding gasoline to a fire.
“I think we have a fairly defined style of game,” said Maurice. “The players that we bring in, part of the reason we bring them in is that we believe they can play that style of game.”
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