Panthers' Brad Marchand out 6 weeks with lower-body injury

The diagnosis came down Friday after practice, a few days after Marchand left Tuesday's 2-1 win over Los Angeles unable to put weight on his left leg.

Jameson Olive

@JamesonCoop

Marchand out 6 weeks, per Maurice. He’ll resume skating in 3 weeks.

So there's good news and bad news. Six weeks is a long time to be without a guy who put up 27 goals and 54 points in 52 games last season. But being on the ice in 3 weeks means this probably isn't a season-wrecker. On that timeline he's looking at mid-to-late November, with the extra weeks set aside to get his legs back under him.

The timing is brutal, though. Marchand missed all of preseason and Florida's first 2 regular-season games recovering from offseason hernia surgery. The Kings game was only his second one back. He was driving to the net, tangled with Brandt Clarke, took Clarke's stick to the face, then crashed into Brady Tkachuk and the boards. Back on the bench for a couple of days, then gone for 6 weeks.

It also isn't the only hole in the lineup. Captain Aleksander Barkov is already out 6 to 8 weeks with a knee injury of his own, which puts Florida's 2 most important veteran forwards on almost the same recovery calendar. Maurice is reshuffling the top 6 before the season is even a week old, and the first move came out of practice.

George Richards

@GeorgeRichards

Lars Eller centering BTka and Reinhart on the top line

Lars Eller gets the middle between Brady Tkachuk and Sam Reinhart. That's a big ask for a depth center, but Reinhart can drive a line by himself and Brady brings the net-front chaos Marchand usually handles. The rest of the forward group stays mostly where it was, with Sam Bennett centering Carter Verhaeghe and Matthew Tkachuk, and Anton Lundell between Eetu Luostarinen and Vilmanis.

Jameson Olive

@JamesonCoop

#FlaPanthers practice lines: Verhaeghe - Bennett - Tkachuk Luostarinen - Lundell - Vilmanis B. Tkachuk - Eller - Reinhart Imama - Lafferty - Hathaway Forsling - Ekblad Mikkola - Jones Gudas - Kulikov Balinskis Markstrom Schmid

What to watch: whether Eller-Brady Tkachuk-Reinhart actually holds up in games or Maurice is mixing again within a week, and whether Marchand is really skating at the 3-week mark. Florida plays Minnesota on Saturday. Marchand is 38, and Florida could only get through a stretch without him by sticking together. So far they're 1 healthy veteran short of comfortable, and it's October 9.