Florida Lost Its Starting Goalie Again and the Net Goes to a 6-Foot-8 Undrafted Rookie
Jacob Markstrom took a puck in practice on Monday. On Tuesday, Paul Maurice said his starting goaltender would miss 10 to 14 days with an upper-body injury, and Florida put him on injured reserve.
It is the second time in 10 days the Panthers have lost him. Markstrom left a game in Buffalo on Oct. 12 after one period when something tightened up, missed two games, and came back on Oct. 17.
So Florida recalled a 25-year-old from Charlotte who has never played an NHL game. At 6-foot-8, Cooper Black is expected to make his debut Thursday night in Pittsburgh, and multiple outlets report he would become the tallest goaltender in league history.
Black Is Not a Prospect Anybody Drafted
Black went undrafted. He played two seasons at Dartmouth, 60 games with a 2.82 goals-against average, then spent part of 2024-25 in the ECHL with the Savannah Ghost Pirates. Florida signed him as a free agent in 2024 and gave him a two-year, two-way extension in June.
He went 25-13-4 with a 2.47 goals-against average in a career-high 42 games for the AHL Checkers last season, and he is 2-1-0 with a .919 save percentage in three games this year. He was called up once already this month and did not play.
Maurice, on his new goalie: “That’s a big lad. He moves like an athlete, so there’s some power to what he does. We’re excited about it.”
Black is handling it the way a player who has waited handles it. “You just have to take it day-by-day,” he said. “If you look too far ahead, you’re going to make it into something bigger than it actually is.”
He would be the first Panthers goalie to make an NHL debut since Spencer Knight in April 2021. The matchup helps. Pittsburgh is 3-6-1, has lost four straight, and has allowed five or more goals in each of those four losses.
The Bigger Problem Is the Bet Florida Made
Akira Schmid is the nominal starter while Markstrom is out, and he has been shaky. He is 2-2-1 with a 3.62 goals-against average and an .867 save percentage after allowing five goals in Wednesday’s 5-1 loss at Ottawa. He does own real postseason history, having shut out the Rangers twice in the 2023 playoffs with New Jersey.
Florida’s team save percentage through 10 games is .882.
Here is how the Panthers got here. Sergei Bobrovsky, who won them back-to-back Stanley Cups and sits seventh all time in wins, signed with Toronto on July 1 for three years at $7 million a season. Florida replaced him with Markstrom at $6 million, acquired from New Jersey for three forwards, and Schmid at roughly $2 million a year.
Bobrovsky has not been good in Toronto either, at 1-3-2 through six games. That does nothing for Florida, which is 5-3-2 and fourth in the Atlantic behind Boston, Tampa Bay and Ottawa.
The injury list makes it worse. Captain Aleksander Barkov has been out since Oct. 1 with a lower-body injury Maurice described as a six-to-eight week rehab with no surgery required. Brad Marchand and Jonah Gadjovich are also on injured reserve.
Two Cups buy a lot of patience. They do not solve an .882 save percentage. Florida is early in a four-game road trip with a rookie in net and its captain in street clothes, and the Atlantic is not going to wait around.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
