Florida Panthers: Lines, Updates, Preview for March 23 Game vs. Pittsburgh Penguins
The Florida Panthers look to snap a skid of four losses in their past six games against the hot PIttsburgh Penguins.
The Florida Panthers return home from a rough six-game road trip with a clash with the Pittsburgh Penguins.
After going 2-4-0 on the trip with Aaron Ekblad and Dmitry Kulikov joining the list of unavailable players, things are not going to get any easier for the Panthers as they enter the final 12 games of the season.
Despite sitting seven points out of the Eastern Conference wild card race, the Penguins are no laughing matter. They have won five of their past six games and have beaten some pretty good teams at that — handing losses to likely playoff squads Vegas, New Jersey and Minnesota during that stretch.
“I want to see some speed tonight,” coach Paul Maurice said. “It will be very important with the way they skate, the way they move the puck and then some mental sharpness. We lost that a bit last night [in a 6-3 loss to Washington]. We need to be a little quicker on our reads, the hard gap, lots of confidence in the defensive part of our game, it’s our strength. So we want to make sure our reads look good and the game is played very, very tight.“
The Panthers have struggled playing against teams that have the type of desperation the Penguins have. Over their past six games, they have played three of them against likely bubble teams and only came out with a win against a Blue Jackets team in the midst of one of its worst stretches of the season.
“You have to find that juice,” Maurice said. “The best part of our game is that you can’t play fighting hockey. It’s on or it’s not. And over 82, that’s the mental challenge. If you’ve got a few points in the bank, maybe a few teams have some sort of an advantage, but 87 is not going to get you into the playoffs. So, we still have work to do and the excitement for us is building a game that we can be excited about.”
They are going to need to get off to a hot start early if they want to win this one — unlike how they started their losses to the Montreal Canadiens and the New York Islanders.
And, as they always have to when Pittsburgh comes to town, they will have to keep an eye out for Sidney Crosby. He has four goals and eight points in his past five games — 25 goals and 76 points in 69 total games this season — and has been a thorn in Florida’s side for years.
THE NEWS
Sergei Bobrovsky will start in net for the Panthers tonight.
Tonight’s game will start at 6:00 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
Mackie Samoskevich — Aleksander Barkov — Sam Reinhart
Carter Verhaeghe — Sam Bennett — Evan Rodrigues
Eetu Luostarinen — Anton Lundell — Jesper Boqvist
A.J. Greer — Nico Sturm — Jonah Gadjovich
Gustav Forsling — Seth Jones
Niko Mikkola — Tobias Bjornfot
Uvis Balinskis — Nate Schmidt
Sergei Bobrovsky
Vitek Vanecek
Scratched: Tomas Nosek
Suspended: Aaron Ekblad
Injured: Matthew Tkachuk (LTIR), Brad Marchand (upper-body injury), Dmitry Kulikov (upper-body injury)
PITTSBURGH PENGUINS PROJECTED LINEUP
Rickard Rakell — Sidney Crosby — Bryan Rust
Connor Dewar — Evgeni Malkin — Philip Tomasino
Jonah Koppanen — Blake Lizotte — Noel Acciari
Danton Heinen — Kevin Hayes — Boko Imama
Matt Grzelcyk — Kris Letang
Conor Timmins — Erik Karlsson
Ryan Graves — Vladislav Kolyachonok
Tristan Jarry
Alex Nedeljkovic
(Lines via DailyFaceOff.com)
*Opposing team lines subject to change.