Florida Panthers (3-2-1) at Chicago Blackhawks (3-3) 8:30PM Eastern/7:30 Central CSN Chi/Fox Sports FL
THE BUZZ
What always shapes up as a Blackhawk Alumni meeting of sorts is also an important yardstick for the home team tonight. Coming off their last game, before they lost Duncan Keith for 4-6 weeks, the Blackhawks were hardly looking like a juggernaut. Now they have more to figure out—in the absence of what many feel is their most important player. While you can debate Keith’s relative importance to the team, you can’t debate his overall importance: the defensive assignments he carried, the minutes and situations he played in. And the Hawks were already struggling at times to generate offense from the back end. So out comes Keith, in comes . . . David Rundblad.
Meanwhile, the Panthers were a pretty good team last year and come in at 3-2-1 with a pretty deep, talented club.
With cap-driven turnover and now the injury to Keith, the Hawks are not a team that can afford to rest on its laurels—or assume they can win with a lot of fancy and without a lot of work.
PROJECTED LINES AND PAIRINGS
FLORIDA
Huberdeau Barkov Jagr Pirri Bjugstad Smith Jokinen Bolland Trocheck Howden MacKenzie Brickley
Campbell Ekblad Mitchell Gudbranson Kulikov Petrovic
Luongo
CHICAGO
Tikhonov Toews Hossa Panarin Anisimov Kane Garbutt Hinostroza Teravainen Desjardins Kruger Shaw
Svedberg Seabrook Hjalmarsson van Riemsdyk Daley Rundblad
Crawford
Late note: it appears the San Jose Sharks are scouting the Rockford Ice Hogs (and possibly the Blackhawks as well) pretty hard.
All for now,
JJ