Paul Maurice, Matthew Tkachuk shed light on Panthers’ playoff injuries after Stanley Cup win

As the Florida Panthers defeated the Edmonton Oilers for a second straight year Tuesday night, it brought to an end what was a gruelling two-month playoff run for both teams.

And with the conclusion of the postseason, we can now start to get a sense of what these players were playing through amidst the chaos of it all. After the Panthers’ win on Tuesday, Matthew Tkachuk shared some of what he dealt with through the playoffs after he was activated for the team’s Cup run.

“I tore my adductor off the bone. And I had some hernia thing, all on the same side,” Tkachuk told TNT’s Darren Pang postgame.

There’s no denying that Tkachuk, who made his return to play after he was put on LTIR following the 4 Nations Face-Off, seemed slightly off his game through the first few rounds. While it hardly affected the Panthers, considering the depth of their offence, he was having some goalscoring woes with only five tucks through the first three rounds. Nevertheless, the 27-year-old was able to buck down when it counted most, with three goals and six points through Games 3-6 of the Finals.

Meanwhile, according to Paul Maurice, captain Aleksander Barkov had split his palm open in Game 1 against the Oilers and twice ripped the sutures out before they were glued in. While he still registered five assists in the series, the playoff performer failed to score in the Cup Final, and went without a point through Games 1-3. That said, his defensive play was key in holding Connor McDavid to only one goal in the series.

Maurice also shared that Sam Reinhart suffered a Grade 2 MCL tear in their Conference Final contest against the Carolina Hurricanes, causing him to miss Games 3 and 4 of that series. Upon his return, he had two assists across three games, but then found his footing once again, with seven goals and 10 points in Games 3-6 of the Finals. That being highlighted, of course, by his four-goal performance in Tuesday’s Cup-winning contest.

There’s no doubt the Oilers were beaten and bruised across their roster as well, but we’ll likely have to wait until the team’s end-of-year media availability to get some more information on that.

Of course, at this point, the only one we know for sure is Zach Hyman, who suffered a season-ending injury in the Western Conference Final against the Dallas Stars and thus was unavailable for the Cup Final. With the team’s goal-scoring troubles, Hyman was sorely missed against the Panthers, even if he wasn’t playing up to the standards of his historic 16-goal playoff performance last year.