The Florida Panthers (9-8-1) will continue its five-game homestand when they take on the Vancouver Canucks (9-9-2) tonight at Amerant Bank Arena.
Florida had a modest two-game winning streak snapped in Saturday night’s frustrating 3-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning. Brad Marchand beat Andrei Vasilevskiy with a backhander off the post to tie the score in the second period, with the assists going to Sam Reinhart and Anton Lundell, before Jack Finley took advantage of a fallen Donovan Sebrango and solved Sergei Bobrovksy on a breakaway to put the Lightning back on top for good early in third. The Cats did a good job of bottling up Tampa Bay’s skill players, but didn’t put enough effort into getting to the middle of the ice in the offensive zone, wasting another quality from one of its goaltenders.
The Canucks caught the Lightning in the second segment of a back-to-back, taking advantage to skate to a 6-2 win at Benchmark International Arena last night. Jake DeBrusk, Kiefer Sherwood, Linus Karlsson, Drew O’Connor, Mackenzie MacEachern and Marcus Pettersson scored the goals, Quinn Hughes finished the game with four assists and Kevin Lankinen made 28 saves to get Vancouver back to NHL .500. Hughes and Elias Pettersson led the team in scoring with 17 points.
- WHEN: 7 p.m. ET
- WHERE: Amerant Bank Arena – Sunrise, FL
- ON THE TUBE: Scripps
- ON THE DIAL: 560 WQAM (D/B), Thunder 100.3 (Keys)
- SOCIALS: #TimeToHunt, #Canucks, #VANvsFLA, @LitterBoxCats, LBC FaceBook
- ENEMY INTEL: Nucks Misconduct
- FLA IN SEASON SERIES: Game 1 of 2
- LAST MEETING: @VAN 4, FLA 0 (Recap) – 12/12/2024
- NEXT MEETING: March 17, 2026
- PROJECTED STARTERS: Florida: Bobrovsky (8-5-0 .893 / 2.63 1SO) Vancouver: Patera
- PLAYER STATS: Florida / Vancouver
Monday in the Atlantic (Standings/Panthers Playoff Chances)
- Carolina (12-5-1 25P) at BOSTON (12-8-0 24P) 7 p.m.
- Edmonton (9-7-4 22P) at BUFFALO (6-8-4 16P) 7 p.m.
- MONTREAL (10-6-2 22P) at Columbus (9-7-2 20P) 7 p.m.
Idle: DET (23P), OTT (22P), TBL (20P), TOR (18P)