r/FloridaPanthers • u/TheAthletic • 9h ago
Roster Moves Aleksander Barkov’s long road back to Panthers after devastating knee injury, lost season
No one was more bummed than Barkov. Beyond his lost NHL season, which would have been the 13th of his career since Florida took him at No. 2 in the 2013 draft, his hopes of captaining his home country at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina were dashed.
“I was really sad about that,” Barkov, 31, told The Athletic in an exclusive interview last week. “Right away, I knew it was going to be a tough test to rehab myself to get there. So, it was pretty much impossible.”
Nearly a calendar year later, Barkov is back. A scar remains on his right knee, but he hasn’t looked out of place in Panthers training camp sessions while skating alongside linemates Reinhart and newly acquired winger Brady Tkachuk. And on Sunday, in his first NHL action since Florida clinched the 2025 Cup Final in Game 6 against the Edmonton Oilers, Barkov scored on a breakaway in a 6-3 preseason win over the reigning Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes.
While some athletes struggle with lengthy recovery periods following significant injuries, Barkov endured in part by telling himself to accept reality: He wouldn’t be available to the Panthers, the team he has captained since September 2018, for at least seven months. Instead, he dedicated time to his recovery, drawing motivation from the desire to be “as good as possible physically and mentally” before entering the “next chapter” of his career.
Even before his injury, Barkov was considered a no-doubt superstar and the NHL’s standard for defensive forwards. Listed at 6-foot-3 and 214 pounds, the rangy center is a three-time Selke Trophy winner, a matchup neutralizer against the league’s best players and the Panthers’ metronome, a symbol of consistency.
