Brad Marchand will not be in the lineup when Florida opens the season, and Bill Zito confirmed it Wednesday as the Panthers reported for physicals.
Camp got going in Fort Lauderdale with the first practice set for Thursday morning. The biggest story of the day was a player who was not skating with the group.
Zito did not sound rattled. We are going to be very conservative bringing him back, he said, and it is not really a worry or a concern for him.
He expects the winger back early in the season without attaching a date to it. The player is reportedly already on the ice.
The procedure happened in August. He had tried to rehab the problem first and it did not take.
He broke the news himself in a video about missing Zdeno Chara's Last Shift charity game. He was trying to fix it without surgery and had to do it last minute.
The history behind it is the uncomfortable part. Hip and sports hernia issues dating to last December, a managed workload before the Olympics, then shut down in March.
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Brad Marchand injury update leaves Panthers facing brutal opening-night reality
The home opener against Minnesota is set for October 10, and four preseason games start Sunday against the Hurricanes. That is a lot of hockey to cover.
The club's own injury note lines up almost exactly with that home date, listing him out until at least October 10. Early in the season is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence.
David Dwork carried the general manager's remarks out of camp on Wednesday.
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Look at what Florida is missing in the meantime. Twenty seven goals and 54 points across just 52 games, at 38 years old.
Six of those goals came on the power play, along with 14 assists with the man advantage. That is a specialist they do not replace by committee.
He is also not the only problem. Sam Bennett, Carter Verhaeghe and Seth Jones are all listed day to day and questionable for the opener.
Keep reading the list and it gets worse. Niko Mikkola, Uvis Balinskis, Dmitry Kulikov and Jonah Gadjovich are carrying the same tag.
Even the crease has a question. Jacob Markstrom is 36, sits on $6 million, and is himself day to day after a .883 save percentage.
Akira Schmid is the backup plan at $875,000, coming off a .893 mark with two shutouts. That is thin insurance for a September like this.
All of it lands on a team that went 40-38-4 and finished 25th overall, with a brutal 17-23-1 record away from home.
So how conservative can a club afford to be when it starts the year in Carolina?
A 38 year old coming back from a repeat hip procedure is like a roof you have already patched twice. It holds fine until the first real storm.
Paul Maurice will get his top six sorted eventually. The question is whether early in the season still means October by the time anybody counts the standings.
Should the Panthers hold Brad Marchand out until he is fully healthy even if it costs them October games?
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