On Friday afternoon, the NHL announced the 2025-26 All-Star Teams, featuring some of the game's best, like Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, and Andrei Vasilevskiy. In the same press release, the league revealed how the voting went. Unsurprisingly, nobody from the Florida Panthers received a vote, a shocking number compared to the five players that received one in 2024-25.
Ultimately, there is only one word to describe the lack of recognition this past season: injuries.
After running it back to three consecutive Stanley Cup Final appearances, the extra hockey finally caught up with the Panthers in 2025-26, who plummeted down the Atlantic Division standings and missed the playoffs. There wasn't a single player in the lineup who dressed for all 82 games, as Gustav Forsling only made it to 80. Overall, 18 players, including Sergei Bobrovsky, made it to 50 games, and only eight of those made it to at least 70.
Captain Aleksander Barkov got hurt before the season started, sitting out the entire campaign, only recently returning to the ice to lead Finland to a World Championship. Star player Matthew Tkachuk only got into action for 31 games, producing a career-low 34 points. Meanwhile, Brad Marchand, skating in his first full season with Florida, played 52 games and had the team's second-worst plus/minus totals at minus-16.
Between the pipes, with a depleted lineup in front of him, Bobrovsky finished the season with a .877 SV%, the lowest total of his career, and only the second time in his career he posted a sub-.900 SV%.
According to a graphic posted on Reddit, the Panthers tied the Vancouver Canucks with a total of 409 man-game lost to injuries or illness last season.
Previous NHL All-Star Voting
When Florida's magical run of successes began in 2022-23, only Tkachuk (569) and Brandon Montour (11) received votes for the end-of-season All-Star Teams. Tkachuk earned Second Team honors thanks to 491 votes.
During the team’s first Stanley Cup-winning season in 2023-24, four Florida players received votes, with Sam Reinhart (206) and Gustav Forsling (78) joining Tkachuk (220) and Bobrovsky (50).
Last season, on the heels of becoming only the third team in the salary cap era to repeat as champions, more Panthers players received votes, with Barkov (two), joining Reinhart (29), Forsling (seven), Tkachuk (one), and Bobrovsky (five).
Considering Florida didn’t play any extra hockey this spring, everyone on the roster had an early summer to heal, train, and get prepared to bring the franchise back to the Stanley Cup playoffs and, hopefully, win another title with the current core. Despite being shut out in this season’s All-Star Team selections, fans should see a few big names get votes next season.
