Florida Panthers: Lines, Updates, Preview for March 16 Game vs. New York Islanders
The Florida Panthers look to bounce back from a 3-1 loss to the Montreal Canadiens on Sunday night against the New York Islanders.
The Florida Panthers learned a tough lesson after coming off of one of their biggest wins of the season — they cannot take their feet off the gas.
A disastrously slow start against the playoff-hungry Montreal Canadiens team dug them a hole too deep to dig out of in a 3-1 loss on Saturday night. Now, they look to bounce back just over 24 hours later as they head to Long Island to take on the New York Islanders.
“I don’t want to tell you how I thought we played because I want to be respectful of the effort from Montreal — they played hard,” coach Paul Maurice said.
“I can’t really give you an assessment of how good that was because I’m not sure how that relates to how we played. We own that one. Our play, that was on us. We would have to play considerably better to assess what the other team did to us. They beat us. They’re in a fight for their lives, and they played their butts off and that should be the story here.’’
A lot went unsaid by Maurice here, but there was a clear lesson learned: Bring your A-Game and expect that out of teams on the playoff bubble.
Even after sending Brock Nelson to the Colorado Avalanche at the trade deadline, the Islanders are no different.They sit six points back of the final wild card spot and have not stopped pushing for it.
On Friday night, they took the Edmonton Oilers to overtime in what ended up being a 2-1 loss. MVP candidate Leon Draisaitl scored both goals in that game.
New York has also given Florida two of its hardest games of the season. In October, The Islanders took a 3-0 lead on the Panthers before they came back to win 6-3. In February, the Islanders took a 3-2 lead after scoring three goals in the second priod before the Panthers came back to win 6-3, again.
Florida knows what to expect, and it has to play its game.
THE NEWS
Vitek Vanecek is expected to start in net for the Panthers tonight.
Tonight’s game will start at 7:30 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.
CATCH UP WITH THE CHARLOTTE CHECKERS: Read Jayson Williams’ weekly check-in with the Checkers here!
FLORIDA PANTHERS PROJECTED LINEUP
Presented by William Raveis Real Estate
Carter Verhaeghe — Aleksander Barkov — Sam Reinhart
Mackie Samoskevich — Sam Bennett — Evan Rodrigues
Eetu Luostarinen — Anton Lundell — Jesper Boqvist
A.J. Greer — Nico Sturm — Jonah Gadjovich
Gustav Forsling — Seth Jones
Niko Mikkola — Dmitry Kulikov
Nate Schmidt — Uvis Balinskis
Vitek Vanecek
Sergei Bobrovsky
Scratched: Tomas Nosek
Suspended: Aaron Ekblad
Injured: Matthew Tkachuk (LTIR), Brad Marchand (upper-body injury)
NEW YORK ISLANDERS PROJECTED LINEUP
Simon Holmstrom — Bo Horvat — Kyle Palmieri
Anders Lee — Jean-Gabriel Pageau — Anthony Duclair
Pierre Engvall — Casey Cizikas — Hudson Fasching
Maxim Tsyplakov — Kyle Maclean — Marc Gatcomb
Alexander Romanov — Tony DeAngelo
Noah Dobson — Ryan Pulock
Scott Mayfield — Mike Reilly
Ilya Sorokin
Marcus Hogberg
(Lines via DailyFaceoff.com)
*Opposing team lines subject to change.