Yahoo Sports Panthers back on home ice after long road trip, hosting St. Louis
Fans of the Florida Panthers will finally get to see their team in person again on Friday night.
After nearly two full weeks away from home, the Panthers are back in South Florida and will be sticking around for a bit, starting on Friday when the St. Louis Blues make their only visit to Sunrise.
The Blues arrive on short rest, fresh off a 3-1 defeat in Tampa Bay on Thursday night. It was the third time in four games that St. Louis was held to a single goal.
Jim Montgomery’s new squad has followed up a stretch in which they won six of nine with a 1-3-1 run over the past week.
Jordan Binnington was pulled after allowing three goals on 11 shots in 33 minutes of action against Tampa, so Florida will likely face backup Joel Hofer.
He’s done well in limited action this season, holding a 7-3-0 record to go with a 2.83 goals against average and .905 save percentage. He has won each of his past four starts and stopped all seven Lightning shots he faced in relief on Thursday.
As for Florida, the hope is that returning home and sleeping in their own beds will help some of the sick Panthers to feel better.
Several players were under the weather during the road trip, and it caused both Sasha Barkov and Sam Bennett to miss time.
Here are the Panthers projected lines and pairings for Friday’s matchup with the Blues:
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
Uvis Balinskis – Nate Schmidt
Scratches: Jonah Gadjovich, Adam Boqvist
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