While preseason results are pretty meaningless, it was still nice to see the Florida Panthers get off the snide with Saturday’s 6-0 drubbing of the Dallas Stars in Tulsa.
Sam Montembeault stopped all 30 Dallas shots he faced to all but lock up the backup goalie job in my humble opinion. It shouldn’t be long before Chris Driedger is on his way to Springfield.
It looks like defensemen Ethan Prow and Thomas Schemitsch and goaltender Philippe Desrosiers are on their way to the Thunderbirds, putting the training camp roster at 29, leaving seven cuts for the Cats to get down to 22 players.
One of those cuts will be Driedger, leaving some interesting battles for the remaining open slots on the team.
At forward, we have seven skaters battling for three spots. Those bubble forwards are Jayce Hawryluk, Denis Malgin, Dryden Hunt, Owen Tippett, Troy Brouwer, Dominic Toninato and Anthony Greco.
Greco, who led the T-Birds with 30 goals and 59 points, is making a strong case for himself with 3 goals and 1 assist so far this preseason.
The last spot on the blue line is a three-man race between Josh Brown, Ian McCoshen and Riley Stillman, who has been pretty impressive thus far.
The Cats will play at home for the first time this preseason, hosting the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday.
Sergei Bobrovsky is expected to make his first appearance for the Panthers.