Florida
Injury-plagued Florida eliminated from playoff contention
SUNRISE, Fla. — Maybe the end for the Florida Panthers came when Brad Marchand was shut down for the season last month. Or maybe it was when Seth Jones broke his collarbone and wound up missing 26 games. Or, maybe it was 20 minutes into training camp, when captain Aleksander Barkov blew out his knee.
Nobody knows when the season was officially doomed.
Doesn’t matter now. The Panthers are out.
Games remain, but the Panthers were mathematically eliminated from playoff contention on Saturday with a 9-4 loss to Pittsburgh. For the first time since 2022, a team other than Florida will represent the Eastern Conference in the Stanley Cup Final and for the first time since 2023, a team other than the Panthers will be the one hoisting the greatest chalice in sports.
They’ve known this was coming for a while. It’s just official now.
“Obviously, no one’s happy about the situation,” Panthers forward Sam Bennett said. “But it’s about really just sticking together as a team and going through this as a team. We’re all sticking together. It’s not fun sometimes. But we’re just trying to make the best of it.”
By the time the regular season ends in a couple of weeks, the Panthers will have gone well past the 500 man-games-missed mark this season because of injury. Barkov, the captain who Panthers coach Paul Maurice believes is the best player in the world, missed the entire year and a chance to captain Finland at the Milan Cortina Olympics as well.
Jonah Gadjovich will wind up missing 72 games with an upper-body injury. Tomas Nosek missed 60 games with a knee injury. Dmitry Kulikov is up to 58 games missed, most with a shoulder injury and now a badly broken nose. Matthew Tkachuk missed 47 games while recovering from surgery to repair a sports hernia and torn adductor.
Cole Schwindt missed more than half of the season with a pair of injuries. Marchand will miss 29 games and Jones missed 26. Niko Mikkola, Evan Rodrigues, Sam Reinhart, Uvis Balinskis and Anton Lundell were all shut down for the season at least a couple of weeks ago. Aaron Ekblad broke a finger this week and he won’t play until next season.
And it was no laughing matter at the time, but Eetu Luostarinen missed nine games — after getting burned while barbecuing.
“I’d say we had some adversity,” Maurice said.
Add it all up, and Florida is likely going to finish the season with no more than eight players who dressed in last year’s Cup-clinching win against Edmonton on the ice. The Panthers bent, bent, bent all season and finally broke.
“They’ve been true to it,” Maurice said, speaking of the team’s culture. “And we’ve had some tough nights, but the bench has been right and they’re cheering for each other. They’re engaged in the game. They’re talking about the game. It’s just, you’re just not going to be able to produce, not going to be able to execute a whole bunch of things that you normally expect to.”
Put simply, the Panthers might just need a break.
They were in 67 playoff games over the last three seasons, the most in the NHL — and unbelievably, more than 17 other franchises played in that span combined. They’ve logged tons of miles, taken tons of hits and done it all with very short offseasons because their Cup runs kept stretching into June while non-playoff teams are done in April.
“I think we all know … how good this hockey team is,” Bennett said. “We know how good we’re going to be when we have everyone healthy and everyone back. So, there’s obviously a ton of excitement, I think, in anticipation for next year.”
With good reason. Hockey operations president and general manager Bill Zito has had the vast majority of the core under contract for some time: Barkov, Tkachuk, Reinhart, Bennett, Marchand, Carter Verhaeghe, Jones, Ekblad, Gustav Forsling, Lundell, Rodrigues, Mikkola, Kulikov, Balinskis, Reinhardt and Jesper Boqvist are among those who are signed. The biggest question is at goalie, where Sergei Bobrovsky will be a free agent, but one who is believed to want to remain with the Panthers.
All that talk can wait, at least for a couple of more weeks.
“We’re just focused on this year,” Jones said after the loss Saturday.
Things, if the Panthers are lucky, should look very different next season. Or put another way, things could look like how they were in June 2024 and June 2025, when Florida won the Cup. The celebrations started like this: NHL commissioner Gary Bettman would say a few words, then hand the Cup to Barkov, who would skate away and hoist.
The Panthers felt like that could have happened again this season. For about 20 minutes, anyway. It was at the 20-minute mark of the first full-team training camp practice where Barkov blew out the ACL and MCL in his knee.
“You know right away. Oh, you knew it was bad,” Maurice said. “He’s a tough one. He doesn’t go down lightly. It was as close to being at a funeral as there can be. The 19th minute, we are humpin’, up and down the ice. And I’m taking it all in thinking, ‘Oh, we’re right there. These guys are focused, they’re fit, they’re pushing themselves. I’m not even yelling at them anymore.’ And then that happens.
“The next three days were a prolonged funeral service. We didn’t know it was going to be for our season.”
If the Panthers were in the playoff chase, Barkov might be playing now. If there was a Game 1 of Round 1 sometime in the next couple weeks, the expectation is Barkov would have been ready. And now, the Panthers will pivot to Game 1 of next season.
They won’t be the defending Cup champions anymore. It might actually rekindle the desire to win it again.
“Bill Zito’s vision for this team has just been so bang on,” Maurice said. “We have full faith in the vision that he has for the group, and the core is going to be here next year. We’ll all be excited about that.”
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s oldest son, married socialite Bettina Anderson on Thursday in West Palm Beach, Florida, according to Palm Beach County records.
A private wedding celebration is expected to take place Saturday in the Bahamas, Page Six reported. President Donald Trump indicated Thursday that he will not be in attendance, saying the date “was not good timing for me,” citing the ongoing war in Iran and other presidential matters. The president was initially scheduled to be in Bedminster, New Jersey, this weekend but is now expected to be at the White House.
Still, he offered his congratulations to the couple in a post on Truth Social Friday.
“While I very much wanted to be with my son, Don Jr., and the newest member of the Trump Family, his soon to be wife, Bettina, circumstances pertaining to Government, and my love for the United States of America, do not allow me to do so,” Trump wrote, adding that he felt it was important for him to remain in Washington, D.C., “during this important time.”
On Thursday, President Trump said that he had known Anderson “for a very long time, and hopefully they are going to have a great marriage.”
Anderson comes from a prominent Palm Beach family. Her father is Harry Loy Anderson Jr., a banker and philanthropist.
Trump Jr. announced his engagement to Anderson in December during a White House holiday party.
This is the second marriage for Trump Jr., 48, who has five children with his first wife, Vanessa Trump. The pair were married at Mar-a-Lago in 2005 and divorced in 2018. He was later engaged to Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News host who is now U.S. ambassador to Greece.
Trump Jr. operates the Trump Organization with his brother, Eric Trump, and has been a fixture alongside his father at political events. Anderson is a committee member at the Project Paradise Film Fund, which is focused on protecting Florida’s environment.
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Military service members can get free admission to The Florida Aquarium over Memorial Day weekend.
Active-duty military, veterans, retired military personnel, drilling reservists, National Guardsmen, and honorably or medically discharged service members will receive free general admission from Saturday, May 23, to Monday, May 25.
Military service members will need to show a valid U.S. Military ID or DD Form 214 to get a free ticket at the ticket window.
“In honor of the courage, commitment, and sacrifice of our nation’s military service members, The Florida Aquarium will once again offer complimentary general admission during Memorial Day weekend as a heartfelt thank-you to those who serve and have served our country,” the aquarium said.
The aquarium said it will offer extended hours from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. throughout the three-day weekend.
To learn more about the aquarium, visit its website.
Florida
Florida officials to pay $485,000 settlement to fired FWC biologist over Charlie Kirk post after his death
Florida officials will pay nearly half a million dollars to a biologist who was fired by a state agency for criticizing conservative activist Charlie Kirk on social media after his death.
The state’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission fired biologist Brittney Brown in September after she reposted a meme on her personal Instagram account that claimed Kirk wouldn’t care about children being shot in their classrooms. She filed a lawsuit seeking reinstatement, saying she struggled to find other work because the state agency is the regulatory body for her research specialization in bird conservation.
Brown on Thursday signed a $485,000 settlement agreement with agency directors that covers back pay, damages and attorney costs. She agreed as part of the deal to not seek future employment at the agency.
Fish and Wildlife officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Other workers also filed pending lawsuits over being fired over comments about Kirk’s assassination
Brown was among a wave of workers in both the public and private sector who lost their jobs over comments about Kirk’s assassination on a Utah university campus. Lawsuits are pending over many of those firings.
Before his death, Kirk and the organization he founded, Turning Point USA, galvanized the conservative youth vote to help President Donald Trump win a second term.
Kirk’s supporters combed social media after the Sept. 10 shooting for posts they viewed as celebrating his death. Influencers like Laura Loomer pledged to ruin the careers of people who made light of the killing, and the conservative social media account Libs of TikTok shared the identities and workplaces of many who posted with its audience of millions.
Libs of TikTok posted about Brown, and she was fired the next day, according to her lawsuit. Brown said someone then alerted Libs of TikTok about her termination only about 10 minutes after it happened and before it was made public.
In a rare instance in Tennessee, a retired police officer was jailed for 37 days over a Facebook post joking about Kirk’s assassination. Tennessee officials agreed Wednesday to pay $835,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by the man, Larry Bushart. While behind bars, Bushart lost his postretirement job and missed the birth of his granddaughter before authorities eventually dropped a felony charge against him, he said in the lawsuit.
Before her termination, Brown worked for Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission for about seven years and studied shorebirds and seabirds on the panhandle, according to court documents.
Carrie McNamara, an attorney with the ACLU of Florida, called Brown’s settlement deal “a hard-won vindication” that sends a message to Florida officials that they cannot punish speech they dislike.
“The First Amendment does not disappear when someone accepts a government job,” McNamara said.
Brown’s former supervisor at the agency, Habitat and Species Conservation Director Melissa Tucker, had claimed that Brown’s post generated hundreds of formal complaints and caused significant disruption. Discovery in the case later revealed that the agency only received about 50 complaints.
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker imposed sanctions against Tucker last week for exaggerating the amount and then not correcting the record.
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