The Panthers' Heavy Reliance Of NHL Veterans Is A Double-Edged Sword

The Florida Panthers [http://thn.com/florida] have been one of the NHL’s most successful teams, in no small part because they bet on veteran players, and those veterans carried them to back-to-back Stanley Cups and a third straight Cup final appearance in 2024-25. But the Panthers’ reliance on older players is a double-edged sword, and in the 2025-26 campaign, as well as at the start of the current 2026-27 season, Florida is seeing the downside of that approach. Of course, we’re talking about the early-season injuries to Panthers star center and captain Aleksander Barkov, as well as left winger Brad Marchand.