Aleksander Barkov injury a brutal break for Panthers

One of the feel-good stories of this season was Aleksander Barkov’s return to the Florida Panthers. After missing the entirety of the 2025-26 season with a torn right ACL and MCL, the center worked his way back from the injury, even playing for Finland in the IIHF World Championship. The Panthers had high expectations for the 2026-27 season, and part of it was because of the healthy return of their captain.

But unfortunately, Barkov’s return was problem-free for only two games, as he left Thursday night’s game against the San Jose Sharks with an injury. It was to his left leg this time, but for hockey fans, it was still a scary sight after what Barkov went through last season.

Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton talked about Barkov’s injury and the reality that health isn’t guaranteed in hockey on Daily Faceoff Live.

Carter Hutton: It’s hard to watch. Barkov is just internationally loved. I don’t think there’s many people that don’t like the way he plays the game and the way he carries himself and his leadership. Granted, I know Florida draws a lot of attention with the Tkachuk brothers and Marchand and the way they play, but Barkov is loved.

You see what he went through to get back into this. His reaction to me, as a player who’s been around the game long enough, you know that something went wrong. I’ve been in that situation where you get a tweak or something happens and you’re like, “that’s okay, it’s going to go away”. But when you are hurt, you played this game long enough, something definitely happened there. I just hope and pray for him that it’s just short-term here and we can see him back on the ice soon.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Yeah, you hope it’s just a sprain or something, and maybe it’s four-to-six weeks, maybe it’s nothing and he avoided it. But the way he threw his gloves down, I use the word gut-wrenching. You just feel so bad for a player like that.

And then the other side of it is it’s an unfortunate reality of the sport. The Florida Panthers were so injured last year, and a big reason why people are optimistic on them… yes, the Brady Tkachuk add was massive… but everyone just said “well, they’re going to be healthy this year”. You’ve been around the game long enough, health is never guaranteed. It was a bit of the discourse yesterday with the Oilers, people are going “they’ll get the injuries out of the way early”. And it’s like, yeah, I guess that’s an optimistic view of it. But health is never guaranteed in the NHL and a sport like hockey.

Carter Hutton: 100%. And this is something I’ve dealt with so many times with teams, with myself, with staff. You start losing man games and then all of a sudden it’s really hard to make it up. And there are replaceable pieces on teams. You lose a bottom-six guy, you lose a bottom-pair defenseman, you have the American Hockey League guys or extra players ready to fill in.

But again, just like we saw last year, Barkov is one of those irreplaceable players in your lineup. He sets the tone. He plays the tough minutes against the best players. So hopefully this isn’t long-term, just from the human side of it. I just can’t imagine what he’s going through today as he gets ready for his MRI.

You can watch the full episode here…