Watch out Finland, here come the Panthers.
The Florida Panthers will begin their much anticipated two-game NHL Global Series matchup with the Dallas Stars on Friday at Nokia Arena in Tampere, Finland.
It’s where Panthers captain Sasha Barkov grew up, and he’s been happy to show his teammates around his hometown.
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Florida arrived in Finland on Tuesday, spending a couple days in Anton Lundell’s hometown of Helsinki.
After a couple days of enjoying Finnish customs and the native cuisine, the Panthers are getting back to work and looking to continue a strong start to the season, particularly on the road.
Florida enters Friday’s game riding a five-game road winning streak and sitting atop the Atlantic Division with a 7-3-1 mark.
The Stars have been no slouches themselves. Dallas has won seven of their nine games so far this season, including all five they’ve played on home ice.
It should be a great two-game set between two powerhouses from different conferences.
Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice sure thinks so, and the logic behind his reasoning is sound.
“Our best games have been against teams that we played a playoff series against, there’s some understood rivalry built into that game, so you could get to your emotional level,” Maurice explained. “But I expect that in these next two games. We have a lot of respect for Dallas, even though we haven’t played them in a playoff series. Our challenge this year has been rising to the emotional level that you need to play our game against every team. It’s what we work on, what we talk about. I’m really pleased that we did that in our last game – we went in and played a hell of a game against Buffalo, and they played really well too. They played hard. So that’s our challenge. I think we’re going to this is going to be a fantastic series.”
Maurice also confirmed Friday morning that forward Tomas Nosek would make his Panthers debut after missing the start of the season with an injury suffered during Florida’s preseason-opening doubleheader.
Nosek has been skating for several weeks and is expected to center the Panthers fourth line, between A.J. Greer and rookie Mackie Samoskevich.
Here are the Panthers projected lines and pairings for Friday’s tilt in Tampere:
Evan Rodrigues – Sasha Barkov – Sam Reinhart
Carter Verhaeghe – Sam Bennett – Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Jesper Boqvist
A.J. Greer – Tomas Nosek – Mackie Samoskevich
Gus Forsling – Aaron Ekblad
Niko Mikkola – Dmitry Kulikov
Nate Schmidt – Uvis Balinskis
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