Florida Panthers Open Unique Two-Game Set vs. New Jersey Devils
The Florida Panthers and New Jersey Devils open up the first of a seemingly new addition to NHL schedules this year — a Tuesday/Thursday set at Amerant Bank Arena.
The Florida Panthers and New Jersey Devils are going to have to get used to each other over the next few days.
In what seems to be a new addition to NHL schedules, the two Eastern Conference powerhouses are going to be playing each other twice in a row in the friendly confines of Amerant Bank Arena.
“You’ve got two teams with skilled players but it gets to physical very quickly,” coach Paul Maurice said. “I love the home and home back-to-back and I love the double back-to-back on the road. Anytime you get to play a team twice, it’s a little tiny mini playoff series, right?
“You get to play the game and then you both get to work on the same video and then you get to come back and see how your team handles the adjustments that you need to make.”
It saves the Devils a second trip to Florida — they play the Lightning once this season and will venture out to Tampa to do so on Saturday — and it gives two teams with some history a chance to go at it.
That factor does not apply for the Panthers here (nor does it in any of their other two-game sets this season) but it would be a welcome one if this feature of the schedule is here to stay in the future.
“I think it’d be great for scheduling for the league, so we’re not flying all over the place,” Aaron Ekblad said. “I mean, I’m not here complaining. I love what I do, but if you can rest your players more, you can get a better product on the ice.”
The Panthers and Devils have had their fair share of brawls and scrums over the past few years, many stemming from a controversial hit that Nico Hischier threw on Aleksander Barkov on Dec. 17, 2022 that ended up keeping him out of the lineup for three games.
Ekblad said that it feels no different than any other game, but tensions are bound to boil over when these two teams are exposed to each other for a longer period of time.
New Jersey has vastly improved since injuries and a slew of goaltending issues caused them to miss the playoffs last season
The Devils are currently 10-6-2, which is currently good for second in the Metropolitan Divison in points (albeit their points percentage ranks fourth due to the four extra games played they have compared to the rest of the playoff field in the Metro.)
Extra games played or not, this is still a much-improved New Jersey team that will make Florida work to extend its seven-game winning streak.
“They are a pretty good offensive team and they got some good defensemen they added this offseason,” ex-Devil Tomas Nosek said. “We’ll see how it is, and I think if we stick to our game, we should be fine.”
Jacob Markstrom has helped patch up the holes in net — albeit with his numbers not quite up to his standard to start the year — going 7-4-1 with a .902 save percentage (SV%) and a 2.67 goals-against average (GAA). Jake Allen has also spelled him off quite well after being acquired at the trade deadline last year, going 3-2-1 with a .914 SV% and a 2.35 GAA.
Stars Jack Hughes (7-11-18), Timo Meier (6-7-13) and Nico Hischier (10-6-16) are also back to producing after injuries and cold streaks plagued them last season while free agency pick-ups Brett Pesce, Brendan Dillon and Johnathan Kovacevic have helped bolster their blue line.
The Panthers are going to have a few more sets like this later this month.
In fact, Florida’s next two games after this are part of a home-and-home with the Winnipeg Jets on Saturday and Tuesday. They will conclude the month with a home-and-home set with the Carolina Hurricanes with a trip to Raleigh on Black Friday and a home game against them the following afternoon.
Florida has a home-and-home scheduled with Tampa Bay just before the Christmas break in December for its last double-feature of the season.
These back-to-back games were a feature the league tried during the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season — where teams only played against teams in its division — and it seems to have gone well.
Maurice remembers those days all too well, coaching the Winnipeg Jets as the only team in the Central time zone in the All-Canadian North Division.
“We didn’t have a team in our time zone, so we were going back and forth all across Canada,” he said. “As difficult as it was — and it was more difficult because it was very strange up there, that nobody was in the hotels, there just weren’t people, nobody in the buildings — not having to fly as much really helped.
“Being in the same city three, four or five days in a row helped us greatly. We got to know [the Calgary Flames] pretty well. … I think it’s great for the intensity, for the markets and I think it’s a more competitive way to play.”
In that Canadian divison, Maurice’s Jets had to play against Matthew Tkachuk’s Flames four games in a row at times.
It got to be a bit annoying for the old Winnipeg coach, but he sure isn’t complaining now.
“He’ll piss your whole bench off for 57 minutes and then score the game-winning goal,” Maurice said. “You just get lathered, and then you meet the young man and he’s such a wonderful person to be around. His on-ice and off-ice personality are different.“
THE NEWS
Spencer Knight will start in net on Tuesday night against the New Jersey Devils.
Today’s game will air at 7:30 p.m. EST and will be streamed exclusively on ESPN+ and Hulu.
For more information on how to catch Panthers games this season, visit nhl.com/panthers/info/how-to-watch.
PANTHERS PROJECTED LINEUP
Evan Rodrigues — Aleksander Barkov — Sam Reinhart
Carter Verhaeghe — Sam Bennett — Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen — Anton Lundell — Jesper Boqvist
A.J. Greer — Tomas Nosek — Jonah Gadjovich
Gustav Forsling — Aaron Ekblad
Niko Mikkola — Dmitry Kulikov
Nate Schmidt — Uvis Balinskis
Spencer Knight
Sergei Bobrovsky
Scratched: Adam Boqvist, Mackie Samoskevich
NEW JERSEY DEVILS PROJECTED LINEUP
Ondrej Palat — Jack Hughes — Jesper Bratt
Timo Meier — Nico Hischier — Dawson Mercer
Paul Cotter — Erik Haula — Stefan Noesen
Tomas Tatar — Justin Dowling — Kurtis MacDermid
Brendan Dillon — Dougie Hamilton
Jonas Siegenthaler — Johnathan Kovacevic
Luke Hughes — Brett Pesce
Jacob Markstrom
Jake Allen
(Lines via James Nichols, New Jersey Hockey Now)
*Opposing team lines subject to change.