Paul Maurice confirms another major injury for the Panthers.

There's no sugarcoating it as this point, the Florida Panthers have been completely decimated by injuries in the 2025-26 National Hockey League regular season.

After already losing star forwards Matthew Tkachuk and Aleksander Barkov to injuries before the season even got underway, things somehow got even worse for the defending Stanley Cup champions when Panthers head coach Paul Maurice stepped up to the microphone on Saturday. Maurice was able to confirm to reporters that veteran defenseman Dmitry Kulikov has also been sidelined by an injury, and it sounds like it might be a fairly serious one as well.

Maurice did not provide an exact timeline for Kulikov's recovery but what he did confirm was that the team is currently evaluating whether or not Kulikov will require surgery to recover from his injury. That suggests to me that, one way or the other, Kulikov is going to be missing a significant amount of time at a point in the season where his team is already dealing with major injury concerns.

It sounds like the Panthers are expecting more updates today that will allow them to make a final determination on whether or not Kulikov will go under the knife, but no official confirmation just yet.

Kulikov has been a huge part of the Panthers back to back runs to the Stanley Cup playoffs, joining the team during the 2023-24 NHL regular season and immediately winning a pair of Stanley Cups in his first and second years with the Panthers. Kulikov averaged over 19 minutes of ice time per game last season across the entire regular season and as a result he will be very difficult to replace on the blue line moving forward.

The Panthers have a lot of tough decisions ahead when it comes to how they will navigate all these injuries, decisions that will be complicated by the NHL salary cap and the recent rule changes regarding injured reserve in the NHL.