Florida Panthers: Lines, Updates, Preview for March 28 Game vs. Utah Hockey Club
Brad Marchand is expected to make his Florida Panthers debut on Friday night against the Utah Hockey Club.
FORT LAUDERDALE — The Florida Panthers are expecting Brad Marchand to make his team debut on Friday night against the Utah Hockey Club.
Marchand, who was acquired by the team on March 7, has not played since sustaining an upper-body injury from a high hit from Pittsburgh defenseman P.O. Joseph on March 1.
“We expect him to be a player for us,” Maurice said. “We’d say we’d get him through warm-ups and see, but he’s healed past that. We think we expect him to play.”
Marchand will make his Florida debut on a line with Sam Bennett and Mackie Samoskevich, who he had been skating with the past three days in practice. Evan Rodrigues will move down from that second line to the fourth line with Nico Sturm and A.J. Greer.
Even with the added boost to the lineup — and the four days off they got following Sunday night’s victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins — the Panthers will still have their work cut out for them on Friday.
The Utah Hockey Club is in desperation mode right now. They sit 10 points behind the St. Louis Blues for the final wild card spot in the Western Conference with two games in hand.
“I feel like a lot of teams right now who we play against are really desperate for points,” Gustav Forsling said. “It’s always fun to play a team that’s hungry, and hopefully it’s going to be a good pace out there.”
Even after suffering an 8-0 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday, Utah is very much still in it and the Panthers know that loss isn’t lingering in their heads for too long going into this game.
“They have a good structured game, they have a good structured team, they have two very skilled lines, they’ve got a good, physical line, they’re fast, their back end can move the puck and they’re in that playoff push,” Maurice said.
“Their leading scorer has more points than our leading scorer. They are a very capable team and what they’ll be able to do is hit that reset button. In the regular season, if you’re way out of it or way on top of it, you lose one and sometimes the emotions bleed into the next game. But when you’re in the playoff push, you just cut that thing right off.”
Clayton Keller leads Utah in points with 78 —sitting tied for 15th in the league with Mark Schiefele and Mikko Rantanen. Utah blueliner Mikhail Sergachev sits in 15th among defensemen in points with 45 in 67 games this season.
THE NEWS
Sergei Bobrovsky will start in net for the Panthers tonight.
Tonight’s game will start at 7:00 p.m. EST and will be broadcasted on Scripps Sports and Panthers Plus. Out-of-market viewers in the United States can stream the game on ESPN+.
For more information on how to catch Panthers games this season, visit nhl.com/panthers/info/how-to-watch.
FLORIDA PANTHERS PROJECTED LINEUP
Presented by William Raveis Real Estate
Carter Verhaeghe — Aleksander Barkov — Sam Reinhart
Mackie Samoskevich — Sam Bennett — Brad Marchand
Eetu Luostarinen — Anton Lundell — Jesper Boqvist
A.J. Greer — Nico Sturm — Evan Rodrigues
Gustav Forsling — Seth Jones
Niko Mikkola — Uvis Balinskis
Tobias Bjornfot — Nate Schmidt
Sergei Bobrovsky
Vitek Vanecek
Scratched: Tomas Nosek, Jonah Gadjovich
Suspended: Aaron Ekblad
Injured: Matthew Tkachuk (LTIR), Dmitry Kulikov (upper-body injury)
UTAH HOCKEY CLUB PROJECTED LINEUP
Clayton Keller — Logan Cooley — Nick Schmaltz
Alex Kerfoot — Barrett Hayton — Dylan Guenther
Lawson Crouse — Jack McBain — Josh Doan
Michael Carcone — Kevin Stenlund — Nick Bjugstad
Mikhail Sergachev — John Marino
Ian Cole — Sean Durzi
Olli Marta — Michael Kesselring
Karel Vejmelka
Jaxson Stauber
(Lines via DailyFaceOff.com)
*Opposing team lines subject to change.