As Panthers await Ekblad injury news, a defense full of questions is about to be tested

The first weekend — and first road trip — of the Florida Panthers’ new season could hardly have started better, until, suddenly, it started to come apart a bit Monday.

The Panthers wrapped up their season-opening road trip against the Boston Bruins and had to play with just five defensemen — and 17 total skaters — because of a Brandon Montour injury. By the end of the second period at TD Garden, they were down to just four with Aaron Ekblad exiting the game.

Now, Florida will play its first home game of the season Wednesday against the Philadelphia Flyers potentially without two of its top four defensemen and the Panthers aren’t sure when Ekblad, a James Norris Memorial Trophy hopeful, might be back.

“No timetable yet,” coach Paul Maurice said after Florida’s 5-3 loss to the Bruins on Monday in Boston. “We’ll get him looked at tomorrow.”

The Panthers (2-1-0) did not practice Tuesday, meaning they likely won’t provide an update on their star defenseman until Wednesday, before they host the Flyers at 7 p.m. at FLA Live Arena in Sunrise. All Maurice said Monday is it’s a “lower-body” injury — the third one he has had in three seasons.

Two years ago, a left leg fracture cut short Ekblad’s season, forcing him to miss the final month of the regular season and Florida’s brief run in the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs. Last year, a right knee injury kept Ekblad out for the final six weeks of the regular season before returning for the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs — albeit at less than 100 percent.

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The Panthers haven’t yet shed light on the severity of this injury.

If Ekblad misses any sort of significant time, Florida will get one of its biggest potential weaknesses tested — even if Montour is able to return quickly and Maurice said he doesn’t “think it’s going to be long term.”

“It was not an easy night,” Maurice said.

The Panthers’ star power is mostly concentrated on offense, where star center Aleksander Barkov and All-Star right wing Matthew Tkachuk are two of the best forwards in the league, and forwards Carter Verhaeghe and Sam Reinhart are some of the best complementary pieces in the NHL. Ekblad’s $7.5 million cap hit is more than double any other defenseman on the team and it’s indicative of the wide gap between him and everyone else on the defense.

It was part of the risk Florida took in trading away All-Star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau and star defenseman MacKenzie Weegar for Tkachuk in July. Tkachuk is a natural replacement for Huberdeau in the lineup, but there was no one to swap in for Weegar, who played virtually every game on the top defensive pairing for the last two years.

Although Gustav Forsling is a competent top-pairing defenseman, his elevation has a trickle-down effect on the rest of the group, which now has Marc Staal playing on the second pairing and fellow defenseman Josh Mahura, claimed off waivers Oct. 10, as a fixture in the lineup.

With the Panthers stuck right up against the salary cap, this year was always going to have to be a bridge year — Florida is projected to have more than $11 million in cap space next offseason to upgrade its defense — and surviving it was going to require some unlikely contributions and, above all else, a spectacular season from Ekblad.

His first two games were very good, with five shots and a power-play goal in more than 25 minutes per game, and the Panthers opened the year with back-to-back wins. Florida couldn’t overcome his injury Monday, though, and now it might have to test out some depth.

Although cap restrictions limited them to the league minimum of 20 players on their roster to start the season, the Panthers can make some emergency call-ups if they don’t have six healthy defensemen, which means defensemen Michael Del Zotto or Lucas Carlsson, or both, could be headed to South Florida for the home opener.

It’s a time for someone to step up because Florida needs to find two more reliable defensemen to go with Ekblad, Forsling, Montour and Radko Gudas down the road, and Staal and Mahura have a long way to go to prove they’re the answers.