The infirmary in Florida has been growing rather rapidly in recent weeks as the Panthers wind down their season. It has expanded by one more as head coach Paul Maurice told reporters today including George Richards of Florida Hockey Now (Twitter link) that center Anton Lundell will miss two to six weeks with a rib injury.
With just three weeks left in their season, it’s fair to say that there’s a good chance that Lundell will miss the remainder of the season unless it’s the best-case scenario recovery-wise. The good news is that Maurice indicated that surgery is not required. Speculatively, if Lundell wants to keep playing after recovering, he should be cleared by the time the World Championship gets underway in May.
Lundell has missed the last two games with the injury. The 24-year-old has been asked to shoulder a much bigger workload this season in the absence of Aleksander Barkov, resulting in him anchoring the top line most nights. As more of a two-way player, it’s not a role he’s necessarily best suited for but with the circumstances, he was the logical choice to move up.
To his credit, Lundell’s point-per-game average is the best of his career at 0.69, just ahead of his rookie season. He sits fifth on the team in scoring with 18 goals (tying his career high) and 26 assists in 64 games while averaging a career-high 19:09 of playing time per contest.
This injury won’t create another emergency recall for the Panthers since he has already missed two games with Noah Gregor coming up on Tuesday. Additionally, team reporter Jameson Olive adds that winger Mackie Samoskevich could return after missing the last two games with a neck laceration. If he does, one of their emergency recall forwards would either have to be sent back to the minors or be converted to a regular recall that counts against their post-deadline limit of five.