A long and grueling road trip for the Florida Panthers will finally come to an end on Saturday in Washington D.C.
Despite averaging less than two goals per game, the Panthers have squeaked out a couple of wins so far and can close out the trip with an even .500 record if they can take care of business against the Washington Capitals.
That will be no easy task.
Washington has been leading the Eastern Conference basically the entire season, currently holding a 12-point edge over second place Carolina in the Metropolitan Division and 13 points clear of Florida, who leads the Atlantic Division.
The Capitals are also playing some very good hockey this month.
They are currently riding a 8-1-0 stretch, with their most recent win clinching the Caps’ spot in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Even with all the success, much of the focus this season has been on star forward Alex Ovechkin as he chases down history.
Entering play Saturday, Ovechkin has 888 career goals. He needs only seven more to break Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goal scoring record of 894.
Here’s a fun fact: there is only one active NHL goalie who has allowed more goals to Ovechkin than Sergei Bobrovsky.
Marc-Andre Fleury has been scored on by Ovie 28 times, the most of any goaltender, active or retired.
Bobrovsky has seen Ovechkin score on him 16 times.
Florida’s backup goalie, Vitek Vanecek, has never been scored on by Ovechkin, at least not in an NHL game.
The two were teammates for a couple seasons in Washington, but practice goals don’t count toward this historic total.
Florida is not expected to have any lineup changes from Thursday’s win in Columbus.
Here are the Panthers projected lines and pairings for Saturday’s battle with the Caps:
Carter Verhaeghe – Sasha Barkov – Sam Reinhart
Mackie Samoskevich – Sam Bennett – Evan Rodrigues
Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Jesper Boqvist
A.J. Greer – Nico Sturm – Jonah Gadjovich
Gus Forsling – Seth Jones
Niko Mikkola – Tobias Bjornfot
Nate Schmidt – Uvis Balinskis
Scratches: Tomas Nosek, Brad Marchand, Dmitry Kulikov
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