Brad Marchand was driving the net with 53 seconds left in the second period in Los Angeles on Tuesday when Brandt Clarke‘s stick caught him high, sending him twisting awkwardly into the right post. He stayed down holding his left knee, and when Brady Tkachuk and Niko Mikkola got him up, he couldn’t put any weight on the leg.
Paul Maurice had no update afterwards, with the Florida Panthers scheduled to examine him on Thursday. In the meantime, Dr. Harjas Grewal looked at the mechanism of the fall and offered a read on what it points to.
“Concern would be an MCL injury for Marchand,” Grewal wrote on his X account. “Mechanism can also cause high ankle sprain, I know he grabbed his knee after.”
How long will Brad Marchand be out?
Grewal’s assessment attaches a range to the more likely scenarios rather than a single figure.
“Time off depends on severity but often grade 2 and 4-6 weeks out,” he wrote.
The part Florida will care about most came last. Grewal put the chance of an ACL tear as low, which separates a month or so on the sidelines from something that would end a 38-year-old’s season.
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Marchand was only playing his second game of the campaign. He was shut down with a core injury on March 6 last season, had surgery in August, and missed Florida’s first two games while recovering. In his debut on Sunday he scored the tying goal with 1:50 left in Anaheim to salvage a point, then logged 9:36 with two shots before going down on Tuesday.
The timing is cruel for a club already stretched. Hours before puck drop, Florida had announced that captain Aleksander Barkov will miss six to eight weeks with a lower-body injury of his own.
Marchand put up 27 goals and 54 points in 52 games last season, and the Panthers still won the game 2-1 without him.
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