Bill Zito, at least as far as he can recall, had not made a game-time trip into the Florida Panthers’ dressing room all season, but he had a headache right before the puck dropped on the Panthers’ game against the Anaheim Ducks on Friday, so he happened to make his way down into the bowels of the Honda Center to grab an Advil while the game was still young.
The scene, at least for a few moments, was harrowing. While he was on his way down to the locker room, Aaron Ekblad’s knee buckled and team trainers rushed him back into the locker room. The star defenseman was in agony and the Panthers were in shock, with flashbacks to Ekblad’s season-ending injury from a year ago flashing through their heads.
“I don’t think this year I’ve gone to the locker room once during the game,” ZIto said Monday, “and that’s when it happened ... so I stuck around, I was watching on TV. Maybe it was about 10 minutes in, our training staff gave me the initial assessment, so it wasn’t as dramatic for me.”
The prognosis was good. Ekblad will still miss plenty of time — perhaps the rest of the season after Florida placed him on long-term injured reserve Sunday to help facilitate its trade for All-Star forward Claude Giroux — but there was no structural damage, interim coach Andrew Brunette said Friday. It will be a matter of weeks rather than months, and the Panthers expect the 26-year-old Canadian back for the first round of the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs.
It only only reinforce one of Zito’s core tenets, though: A team can never have too many defensemen. On Wednesday, the general manager struck a deal to send a 2023 first-round pick to the Montreal Canadiens for defenseman Ben Chiarot. On Sunday, he made another move, sending a 2022 sixth-round pick to the Buffalo Sabres for defenseman Robert Hagg, who will probably be a lineup fixture while Ekblad is out and provide extra depth once he returns.
The price was steep, especially for Chiarot, who might not even ultimately wind up on one of Florida’s top two defensive pairings. In the sort term, their value is unmistakable.
“It’s going to help,” Zito said. “Maybe now we can balance some ice time out, certainly on the back end, and help guys down the homestretch play more balanced minutes as they approach the playoffs, so we have rested players optimized.”
He did, however, say, “You don’t want to overplay it.” When the games matter the most, Hagg might not be on the ice and Chiarot, who led the Canadiens in average time on ice during their run to the 2021 Stanley Cup Finals, might only be on the third pairing.
For now, they’ll have an opportunity. With Ekblad out of the lineup, star defenseman MacKenzie Weegar will need a partner on the top line and Chiarot could get the opportunity. Chairot won’t meet up with the Panthers (42-14-6) until they get to Montreal for their game Thursday, so Weegar skated with Lucas Carlsson — likely now the seventh or eighth defenseman — during practice Tuesday at the Florida Panthers IceDen in Coral Springs.
Hagg, in his first practice for Florida, skated on the third pairing with fellow defenseman Brandon Montour. The Panthers kept their second pairing intact with defensemen Gustav Forsling and Radko Gudas.
Those three pairings all share a commonality with one more skill-based defenseman — Weegar, Forsling or Montour — playing with a more defensive-minded defenseman. Zito was seeking this sort of balance when he added Chiarot last week and Hagg brings the same sort of style.
Even though Florida added him in the wake of Ekblad’s injury, Hagg isn’t an Ekblad replacement. He’s a fill-in for now and a complementary piece when it matters.
“I’m not going to try to be someone else,” Hagg said. “Play good defensively, play physically, play hard, simple passes. They traded for me for a reason, so I’m not going to change who I am and what player I am.”
