The good news for the Florida Panthers is that they’re in firm control of the Eastern Conference Final, dismantling the Carolina Hurricanes by a 5-0 final score on Thursday night to take a commanding 2-0 series lead.
The bad news is that they lost goal-scoring forward Sam Reinhart, who scored 39 goals during the regular season, to an injury; he did not return to the contest and was ruled out.
Panthers Forward Sam Reinhart Was Hurt In Game 2, Did Not Return
Reinhart’s injury took place late in the opening 20 minutes of play when he was struck with an open-ice hip check from Hurricanes forward Sebastian Aho.
Sam Reinhart is OUT for the rest of Game 2 after this hit from Sebastian Aho in the first pic.twitter.com/Xwjqj6Kxj7
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) May 23, 2025
Reinhart appeared to be favoring his leg when he got back to his skates and was seen wincing in pain on the bench. He would eventually return to the team dressing room and didn’t re-emerge.
At the time of his injury, Reinhart had scored four goals and seven assists for 11 points in the 13 postseason games that he and the Panthers had played, which just included a seven-game series victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Last season in the playoffs, Reinhart scored 10 goals with six assists in 24 games, including the Stanley Cup-winning goal in Game 7 of the Cup Final against the Edmonton Oilers.
Panthers Coach Paul Maurice Did Not Have An Immediate Update
Following the game, Panthers head coach Paul Maurice did not have an immediate update on Reinhart’s condition or what his status would be for Game 3.
“He’ll get looked at tomorrow. Saturday, I’ll have something,” Maurice said.
In Reinhart’s notable absence from the lineup, the Panthers used depth forwards A.J. Greer, Tomas Nosek, and Jonah Gadjovich.
Greer, who scored his first goal of the playoffs as part of Florida’s Game 5 blowout win over the Maple Leafs in the previous round and also scored in Game 1 against the Hurricanes, hopes to help the team in any way that he can.
“Obviously, hate to see a guy go down, and as a team and as a band of brothers, you pick everyone up,” Greer said. “So as far as myself getting upline shifts, that’s great. I don’t see myself trying to change my game at all, and I’m trying to just do the same things I do on the fourth line, and not trying to force anything. So I thought we did a really good job at kind of staying composed there.”
Game 3 between the Panthers and Hurricanes is scheduled for Saturday night at 8:00 p.m. ET.
