Florida Panthers: Game Preview, Lineups for Dec. 5 Game vs. Philadelphia Flyers
The Florida Panthers look to extend their point streak to five games as they finish up a two-game road trip in Philadelphia.
The Florida Panthers will be in for a challenge as they look to extend their point streak to five games against the Philadelphia Flyers.
They know all too well how hard the Flyers play them.
When Philadelphia came to town last month, it dragged Florida to a shootout in what was the final of seven consecutive wins for the Panthers. The Flyers play with a ton of physicality, they’re tough at the front of the net and they made it a grinder that night.
The Panthers going to have to be good at all of those things to win, and they’ll need to make some improvements after Pittsburgh dominated the net-front in their last game to jump out to a three-goal lead before they eventually came back.
“They played hard against us, for sure,” Maurice said. “They are very physical and it is going to look the exact opposite of the last one. It’ll be fast, because they can skate. They put a lot of pressure on the puck and they are a heavy shot-blocking team, so we’ll have to work hard to get pucks to the net and they’ll go hard at our net.
“What we weren’t good at against Pitt, we’ll have to be and this well be very physical.”
The Flyers will have a bit different of a look to them than they did in their last meeting with the Panthers.
Back then, rookie phenom Matvei Michkov was scratched for the second of two consecutive games. Ever since, he has tallied nine points in his past 10 games, including a two-point output and the overtime winner in Philly’s 3-2 win over the St. Louis Blues on Saturday.
Rookie netminder Ivan Fedotov has also found his groove in net, going 4-1-1 with a .909 SV% and a 2.57 goals-against average for a Flyers team that struggled out of the gate in part due to poor goaltending.
They jumped into the final wild card spot in the Eastern Conference with their win on Saturday and they are looking to hold onto it with a win.
The Panthers are going to need to play with their usual emotional fire in order to beat them tonight.
THE NEWS
Spencer Knight will start in goal for the Panthers against the Flyers tonight. Sergei Bobrovsky could return from paternity leave for Saturday night’s game back in Sunrise against the San Jose Sharks.
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Today’s game will air at 7:00 p.m. EST and will be broadcasted on Scripps Sports and the Panthers Plus app. It will also be available on ESPN+ for out-of-market viewers.
For more information on how to catch Panthers games this season, visit nhl.com/panthers/info/how-to-watch.
PANTHERS PROJECTED LINEUP
Carter Verhaeghe — Aleksander Barkov — Sam Reinhart
Jesper Boqvist — Sam Bennett — Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen — Anton Lundell — Evan Rodrigues
A.J. Greer — Tomas Nosek — Jonah Gadjovich
Gustav Forsling — Aaron Ekblad
Niko Mikkola — Nate Schmidt
Dmitry Kulikov — Adam Boqvist
Spencer Knight
Chris Driedger
Scratched: Uvis Balinskis, Sergei Bobrovsky (paternity leave)
AHL Charlotte (temporarily, salary cap): Mackie Samoskevich
PHILADELPHIA FLYERS PROJECTED LINEUP
Joel Farabee — Sean Couturier — Travis Konecny
Owen Tippett — Morgan Frost — Matvei Michkov
Tyson Foerster — Noah Cates — Bobby Brink
Scott Laughton — Ryan Poehling — Garnet Hathaway
Cam York — Travis Sanheim
Emil Andrae — Rasmus Ristolainen
Nick Seeler — Egor Zamula
Ivan Fedotov
Aleksei Kolosov
(Lines via DailyFaceoff.com)
*Opposing team lines subject to change.