The Florida Panthers are about to enter the home stretch of their regular season.
Coming off a nice four-day break between home games, Florida is looking to hit the ground running as they host the first of their final 11 games against the Utah Hockey Club Friday night at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise.
Entering play Friday, the Panthers are tied atop the Atlantic Division with the Toronto Maple Leafs and Tampa Bay Lightning but lose out to their neighbors from north of the border on a tiebreaker.
Both the Cats and Leafs hold identical 43-25-3 records, but due to Toronto having more non-shootout wins (42 to 38), the tiebreaker goes to them. Tampa has the same amount of points, but one more game played than Florida and Toronto.
But with 11 games remaining for each team, things are surely going to change over the next few weeks.
Florida’s last game was five days ago, a 4-3 shootout victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins. It was the Panthers sixth straight win on home ice.
As for Utah, the former Coyotes arrive in South Florida with their playoff chances on life support.
With only 10 games remaining, Utah is currently 10 points behind St. Louis for the final Wild Card spot in the Western Conference.
It’s been a strong second half the season for Utah, though.
Over their past 20 games, Utah has points in all but seven of them (11-7-2). That includes their game on Thursday’s night, an 8-0 drubbing at the hands of the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Now they’ll make the short trip from Tampa to Sunrise and wrap up a back-to-back set against a rested and hungry Panthers squad.
If all goes well, Florida will get a boost to their lineup in the form of Brad Marchand.
The future Hall of Famers acquired by the Panthers at the Trade Deadline has been working his way back from an injury he suffered about a week before the deal was made.
Marchand has been skating with Florida for the past several weeks and has been nearing a return.
If he plays, he’ll line up on the Cats’ second line with his old buddy Sam Bennett and rookie Mackie Samoskevich.
Here are the Panthers projected lines and pairings for Sunday’s showdown with the Pens:
Carter Verhaeghe – Sasha Barkov – Sam Reinhart
Mackie Samoskevich – Sam Bennett – Brad Marchand
Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Evan Rodrigues
A.J. Greer – Nico Sturm – Jesper Boqvist
Gus Forsling – Seth Jones
Niko Mikkola – Tobias Bjornfot
Nate Schmidt – Uvis Balinskis
Scratches: Tomas Nosek, Jonah Gadjovich, Dmitry Kulikov
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