The Penguins are looking to follow up on their impressive 6-2 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning. They will waddle on down to southern Florida to take on the rising Panthers. The Florida Panthers are a legit playoff contender who can make noise in the playoffs if they stay healthy… and get quality goaltending. Where have you heard that before?

Over the offseason the Panthers acquired a very underrated Sam Reinhart from the pathetic Buffalo Sabres. I watched a lot of Reinhart in Buffalo and I was always impressed. In fact, if the Penguins actually had desirable assets and cap space I would have probably written some articles about how the Penguins should have aggressively pursued trading for Reinhart. He is a more than capable center as the Sabres found out last year, but he spent most of his time on the wing and it appears that is where he is going to start. He will play alongside Sasah Barkov.



Having Reinhart allows the Panthers to use Jonathan Huberdeau on a separate line which should make them more dangerous.

MacKenzie Weegar is also an under the radar player around the league. He joins with Aaron Ekblad to make one of the better defense pairings in the league



We of course will get a good look at Patric Hornqvist getting up in the face of whichever Penguins goaltender plays this evening. He will be playing on the third line. Mike Matheson remains day to day and the Penguins recalled Pierre Olivier-Joseph due to his status. So we won’t get a head to head matchup of the players who were traded for one another. Here is how the rest of the Panthers lineup shakes out



Some familiar names on that fourth line for Florida

It’s crazy to think what the Panthers could look like if they weren’t sinking 10M into Sergei Bobrovsky’s bloated contract, but they are, and they’ve been notoriously cheap over the year.

The Penguins should have Jake Guentzel back in the lineup and it of course helps when you get one of the best scoring wingers in hockey back into the lineup. Here is a snapshot of the Penguins



Should be a good game.

Thanks for reading!

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