The Florida Panthers travel to Raleigh to play its fourth game of the preseason against the Carolina Hurricanes. Florida (2-1) dropped its last outing 8-7 to the Tampa Bay Lightning in a wild one at Orlando’s Kia Center. Carolina has only played one exhibition game thus far, beating the Lightning by a 2-1 count at Amalie Arena on September 24.
- WHEN: 6:00 p.m. ET
- WHERE: PNC Arena – Raleigh, NC
- ON THE TUBE: Scripps (WSFL-39)
- ON THE DIAL: 560 WQAM (D/B), 1230 The Gambler (PB), Thunder 100.3 (Keys)
- SOCIALS: #TimeToHunt, #CauseChaos, #FLAvsCAR, @LitterBoxCats, LBC FaceBook
- ENEMY INTEL: Canes Country
- PROJECTED STARTERS: Florida: Spencer Knight / Carolina: Frederik Andersen
- PLAYER STATS: Florida / Carolina
Tonight’s Roster
Forwards: A.J. Greer (10), Zac Dalpe (22), Patrick Giles (36), MacKenzie Entwistle (44), Josh Davies (56), Matt Luff (64), Will Lockwood (67), John Leonard (71), Ben Steeves (73), Rasmus Asplund (74), Oliver Okuliar (83), Kai Schwindt (97)
Defensemen: Tobias Bjornfot (2), Jaycob Megna (8), Michael Benning (20), Zachary Uens (46), Marek Alscher (51), Mikulas Hovorka (96)
Goalies: Spencer Knight (30), Cooper Black (31)
Panthers forward Sam Reinhart was one of the players featured in The Athletic’s Who are the NHL’s top 10 regression candidates for 2024-25? ($)
Everything Reinhart touches has turned into gold over the last 12 months. He tallied a whopping 57 goals, scored the Stanley Cup-winning goal in Game 7, finished fourth in Selke Trophy voting and signed the most lucrative contract of his career.
Last season was the first time Reinhart played on Aleksander Barkov’s line full-time, and riding shotgun with an elite center helps partially explain his massive uptick in scoring. Reinhart is a remarkable player and will continue piling up big goal and point totals on Barkov’s wing, but it’s unrealistic to expect him to score at a near 60-goal pace again.
Reinhart scored on 24.5 percent of his shots in 2023-24, which was by far the highest shooting percentage of all NHL skaters who played at least 50 games. It’s practically impossible to sustain a nearly 25 percent shooting efficiency long-term. For reference, Leon Draisaitl is the NHL’s most efficient finisher (among forwards with at least 2,500 minutes in that sample), sustaining a 19.9 percent shooting clip over the last three seasons.
Before last season, Reinhart’s career high was 33 goals, so 57 goals is clearly a major outlier. It’s true Reinhart generated shots and scoring chances at the best rate of his career last season — he absolutely played the best hockey of his life — but some good fortune also aided him. For context, if he had converted last season’s shots at his 15.6 percent career average, he would have scored 36 goals instead of 57.
Expect Reinhart to be closer to the 40-goal range this year rather than contending for the Rocket Richard.
Euro Cats
Ludvig Jansson played on the third defense pairing in Luleå HF’s 4-2 win over Linköping HC in action from the Swedish Hockey League. Jansson logged 15:40 TOI and registered two shots on goal.
Recently promoted forward Stepan Gorbunov saw fourth line duty in Chelmet Chelyabinsk’s 5-4 shootout loss to Gornyet in action from Russia’s VHL.
Forward Stepan Zvyagin skated on the fourth line and did not figure in the scoring in Dinamo Molodechno’s 5-1 victory over Zhlobin in action from the Belarusian ExtraLeague.