The Florida Panthers will be looking to get back in the win column when they host the Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday night in Sunrise.
Florida is fresh off Thursday’s 3-2 overtime defeat at the hands of the Vancouver Canucks and are still playing without captain Sasha Barkov and star winger Matthew Tkachuk.
Now six games into the season, the Cats hold a respectable 3-2-1 record, which isn’t too shabby considering they’ve played only two games at full strength, though even that’s arguable as Tomas Nosek was hurt during the preseason and has yet to officially make his Panthers debut.
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Florida will now welcome their old pals from Vegas to town for a rematch of the 2023 Stanley Cup Final.
Both teams have more than a few changes from how they looked back in June of ’23 to how they’ll take the ice on Saturday.
Probably most notably to Panthers fans will be that former Cats Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith are no longer with the Golden Knights.
The two original Vegas players and Stanley Cup winners have moved on, with the team now being led by the likes of Jack Eichel and Mark Stone, among others.
Florida will likely turn back to Sergei Bobrovsky in goal.
Bob is two wins shy of 400 for his NHL career, mark only 13 goaltenders have reached so far.
Here are Florida’s projected lines and pairings for Saturday’s battle with Vegas:
Carter Verhaeghe – Sam Bennett – Evan Rodrigues
Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Sam Reinhart
A.J. Greer – Jesper Boqvist – Mackie Samoskevich
Jonah Gadjovich – Patrick Giles – Uvis Balinskis
Gus Forsling – Aaron Ekblad
Niko Mikkola – Dmitry Kulikov
Nate Schmidt – Adam Boqvist
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