Panthers Look to Bounce Back Against The Red-Hot Winnipeg Jets
The Florida Panthers look to bounce back from a rare two-game skid against the NHL’s best team.
Photo by Colby Guy
FORT LAUDERDALE — The Florida Panthers face a huge test as they look to snap out of a rare two-game skid on Saturday night.
Florida kicks off a two-game, home-and-home set against the league-leading Winnipeg Jets, who will take their 15-2-0 record to Amerant Bank Arena after suffering just their second loss of the season on Thursday night in Tampa.
“It’s probably our hardest test of the season,” Anton Lundell said. “They have been unreal this year, and we all know that, so it’s going to be very fun to be able to challenge a hot team. We obviously know the last two games were also tough for us, but we’re ready to bounce back.”
Perhaps this two-game mini series is exactly what Florida needs to get on track.
When the Panthers returned from their trip to Finland for the NHL’s Global Series, coach Paul Maurice was worried that the team would fall into a lull going back into its routine after the excitement surrounding the trip to captain Aleksander Barkov’s hometown.
They managed to pick up two more wins after returning home — extending their winning streak to two games and keeping the fun going with their sauna robes from Finland — but the two losses to the Devils were sobering.
And they have to get off the mat from those losses quickly, because their schedule does not get any easier from here.
“You don’t come to the rink thinking that this is going to be another game because their numbers suggest that you are going to have to be at your best to have a chance to beat them,” coach Maurice said. “And I think we need that.
“I think there’s been a bit of a lull coming into the Jersey series. We were worried off that coming off the trip coming into this week, but the back half of our November is nine out of 10 playoff teams, and in the elite part of that right? We’ve got Jersey twice, we got Winnipeg twice, we got Carolina twice, Washington, Toronto, and the only team we see that was not in the playoffs, we haven’t beaten in their building in the two years I’ve been here. So, it’s a 10-game run here. We need to get it back on track and we need to get going. You’re not going to win all of those games, and that’s not going to be your standard, but we have to look a certain way for us to have nice meetings.”
Florida played New Jersey tight in both games for a good chunk of them — being tied with the Devils at some point in the second period — but small mistakes snowballed into big ones as they lost those games by scores of 4-1 and 6-2 respectively.
The key going into a game like this is to not let those snowballs get too big.
“I feel like we’re right there,” Lundell said. “They were tight games, we just have to try to stick with it longer. I feel like we let up a few easy goals, made a few mistakes we haven’t made before, so whenever we make mistakes, we need to be ready to cover for arch other, but overall, just play together. Go out there and support each other.”
Thursday’s game is going to be a big one for Maurice, even if he doesn’t care to admit it.
In his two years in South Florida, he has yet to defeat the Winnipeg Jets team he coached for the better part of a decade prior to his arrival.
“We’ve been awful,” Maurice said. “We have not played well, so we‘re looking to change that.”
He does not harbor ill will — and why would he after the amicable break-up between the two sides, initiated by Maurice feeling the team needed a new voice, led to him winning a Stanley Cup? — but it’s a challenge he has not yet completed nonetheless.
“I don’t feel like that about Winnipeg,” Maurice said. “There are other teams I do, but I don’t feel like that. I would like us to play well, for our team, because we have pride in our game that we play, but it’s a very, very good team over there and they are really well-built, so we’ll have to be at our best.
“For me, there is no animosity there. If they’re not playing the Florida Panthers, I cheer for the Winnipeg Jets.”
THE NEWS
Sergei Bobrovsky will start in net on Saturday night against the Winnipeg Jets.
Today’s game will air at 7:00 p.m. EST and will be broadcasted on Scripps Sports and the Panthers Plus app. Out-of-market fans 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.
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 — Mackie Samoskevich
Gustav Forsling — Aaron Ekblad
Niko Mikkola — Dmitry Kulikov
Nate Schmidt — Uvis Balinskis
Sergei Bobrovsky
Spencer Knight
Scratched: Adam Boqvist, Jonah Gadjovich
WINNIPEG JETS PROJECTED LINEUP
Kyle Connor — Mark Scheifele — Gabriel Vilardi
Cole Perfetti — Vladislav Namestnikov — Nikolaj Ehlers
Nino Niederreiter — Adam Lowry — Mason Appleton
Morgan Barron — Rasmus Kupari — Alex Iafallo
Josh Morrissey — Dylan DeMelo
Dylan Samberg — Neal Pionk
Haydn Fleury — Colin Miller
Connor Hellebuyck
Eric Comrie
(Lines via DailyFaceoff.com)
*Opposing team lines subject to change.