Panthers open road trip in Anaheim feeling confident heading into latest back-to-back set

The Florida Panthers are back on the road, spending the next week on the opposite side of the country.

Tuesday night the Cats will kick off their latest road trip when they visit the Anaheim Ducks at Honda Center.

Interestingly, Florida's four-game road trip includes a pair of back-to-back sets, which seems a little different than a normally constructed roadie.

"I've done this for a while and I've never seen it before," said Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice. "I've never seen a four-game road trip on double back-to-backs with two days off in between."

As with most adversarial things this team faces, Maurice and the Panthers will go into their week away likely viewing it as an opportunity.

The unique schedule combined with facing some tough opponents in their respective barns will give Florida a chance to continue seeking consistency in a situation that would normally be quite difficult to thrive.

So far this season, however, the Panthers have fared quite well in their back-to-backs, particularly on the second night.

So far, Florida has an impressive 5-1-0 mark when playing for the second time in as many days while they are 4-2-0 on the front end.

It’s one of the reasons why the coaching staff feels good about where the team is and where they are heading.

“We have looked at our compete levels in our back-to-back games is a very important indicator for us,” said Maurice. “It's not going to be the wins and losses. We're going to play good teams on back-to-backs straight through the rest of the schedule. I like the way we play on back-to-back nights. It's not pretty, our goalie is going to have to be real good, but fighting through that is a lot more like playoff hockey than when you're playing at home for three (games) and you've got every second day off. These will be hard and you're not winning them playing a loose game. The other team has got an advantage on you. These can be great for us, they can really be the thing that pushes us through."

Defenseman Aaron Ekblad traveled with the team to California and his status for Tuesday’s game will likely be determined after Florida’s morning skate at Honda Center.

Here are the Panthers projected lines and for Tuesday's clash with the Ducks:

Matthew Tkachuk – Sasha Barkov – Sam Reinhart

Eetu Luostarinen – Sam Bennett – Mackie Samoskevich

Carter Verhaeghe – Anton Lundell – Jesper Boqvist

Evan Rodrigues – Tomas Nosek – A.J. Greer

Gus Forsling – Dmitry Kulikov

Niko Mikkola – Nate Schmidt

Tony Bjornfot – Uvis Balinskis

Scratches: Aaron Ekblad, Jonah Gadjovich, Adam Boqvist

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