Fresh off their Opening Night victory on the night they raised their first Stanley Cup championship banner, the Florida Panthers are preparing for a challenging game road trip that begins Thursday night in Ottawa.
Florida defeated the Boston Bruins 6-4 on Tuesday, but now must face a tough gauntlet that includes three division rivals and a total of four games in six days.
It all starts with the Senators, and lately, when Florida and Ottawa get together, the penalty minutes seem to come fast and furious.
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Remember last November, when the Panthers beat the Sens in Ottawa and referee Garrett Rank famously said “every player on the ice has a 10-minute misconduct” following one of the several extracurricular scrums that occurred that evening? Yeah.
The Cats and Sens racked up 167 penalty minutes while Florida came away with the 5-0 win.
“For whatever reason, and maybe its bloodlines, but whenever Ottawa and Florida get together it seems to heat up pretty quick,” Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice said.
He was, of course, referring to brothers Matthew and Brady Tkachuk.
Interestingly enough, while these teams have traded plenty of paint during their recent encounters, the Tkachuk boys do well to stay away from each other.
As both have previously stated, their mother would not have any of it.
In terms of Florida’s lineup, Adam Boqvist isn’t expected to play after taking a puck to the face during Tuesday’s win over Boston.
Maurice didn’t have any update on Boqvist Wednesday as he was still in the process of being evaluated.
Nate Schmidt, who signed with Florida over the summer as a free agent, will likely make his Panthers debut in Ottawa.
Here are the Panthers projected lines and pairings for Thursday’s tilt in Ottawa:
Carter Verhaeghe – Sasha Barkov – Sam Reinhart
Evan Rodrigues – Sam Bennett – Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Mackie Samoskevich
Jonah Gadjovich – Jesper Boqvist – A.J. Greer
Gustav Forsling – Aaron Ekblad
Niko Mikkola – Dmitry Kulikov
Uvis Balinskis – Nate Schmidt
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