Florida Panthers
Florida Panthers Shorthanded In Rivalry Game with Vegas Golden Knights

FORT LAUDERDALE — The Florida Panthers still are not fond of the Vegas Golden Knights, but they will go into their battle of the past two Stanley Cup champions a little shorthanded tonight in Sunrise.
Florida coach Paul Maurice said forward Jonah Gadjovich would not play tonight after sustaining an undisclosed upper-body injury during the first period on Thursday.
With Gadjovich out and the Panthers without any additional bodies with Sasha Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk still not ready to return, Florida will be a player short of the 20-man maximum tonight.
Florida is already playing with defenseman Uvis Balinskis up on the fourth forward line.
The Panthers will have 11 forwards — including Balinskis — and six defensemen tonight.
The starting goalies look like Sergei Bobrovsky and Ilya Samsonov.
“It is not as big a minutes challenge as you would think because you can rotate players down,” Maurice said. “You almost do that anyway if you are chasing a game and you cut your fourth line down. … I don’t see it as a major issue for us. It happens to everybody, you lose a player two minutes into a game. Sometimes it is easier to deal with when know coming into the game that’s how it is going to look. You preplan for it.”
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As for Florida’s rivalry with the Golden Knights, if you thought the Panthers winning the Stanley Cup eases the pain of losing it the year before in Vegas, well, that does not sound like the case.
Last year, the Panthers were seeing red when they played the Knights for the first time on Dec. 23 — and that 4-2 win seemed to get Florida on track for the rest of the season.
The Panthers won both games against Vegas by an 8-3 advantage last season.
“Every game we play against them is exciting,” Gus Forsling said. “There is a lot of emotion, should be a good game. It doesn’t feel any different, we still want to beat these guys as bad as we did before.”
And, even though both teams have had substantial changes since they played in the 2023 Final, the Panthers and Golden Knights know each other pretty well.
“I think what happens is, when you play a team in the playoffs, just from a scouting and pre-scouting, you see so much video they may as well be in your conference,” said Maurice, who could not be goaded into saying he hated the Golden Knights.
“So, Vegas and Edmonton, we have a pretty good handle. We don’t have to be reminded too much of their style of game that they play, the players that they have. There is some familiarity there. When you have two teams who have been to the Finals the last two years, they’re probably pretty good teams. You’re going to have to be on your game.”
— Both Barkov and Tkachuk skated on Saturday morning with Tomas Nosek joining them.
It is the first time Nosek has been spotted skating in full gear since he went crashing into the end boards early in his first preseason game against the Nashville Predators.
Maurice said Tkachuk is on track to return from his illness Tuesday against the Minnesota Wild; Barkov should be back sometime on Florida’s three-game road trip to New York which precedes its two-game set in Barkov’s hometown of Tampere, Finland.
Nosek is on LTIR and is not eligible to return until the Panthers play in Finland.
Maurice said he would be ready to go when his LTIR requirements (10 games and 24 days) is up.
ON DECK: GAME NO. 7
VEGAS GOLDEN KNIGHTS AT FLORIDA PANTHERS
- When: Saturday, 6 p.m.
- Where: Amerant Bank Arena, Sunrise
- Local TV: Scripps Sports — WSFL 39 (Miami/Fort Lauderdale); WHDT 9 (West Palm); LAFF 36.3 (Naples/Fort Myers)
- Streaming: Panthers+; ESPN+
- Radio: WPOW 96.5-FM2; WBZT 1230-AM (Palm Beach); WCTH 100.3-FM (Florida Keys); SiriusXM
- Panthers Radio Streaming: SiriusXM 932, NHL App
- Local Odds — Panthers Favored: Money Line (-125); Puck line (-1.5, -185); Over/Under 5.5 (-115/-105)
- This Season — At Florida: Saturday. At Vega$: Jan. 26.
- Last Season: Panthers Won 2-0
- All-time Regular Season Series: Tied 6-6
- Postseason History — 2023 Stanley Cup Final: Vegas d. Florida 4-1
- Up Next for the Florida Panthers: Tuesday vs. Minnesota Wild, 6:30 p.m.
PROJECTED FLORIDA PANTHERS (3-2-1) LINES
13 Eetu Luostarinen // 15 Anton Lundell // 13 Sam Reinhart
23 Carter Verhaeghe// 9 Sam Bennett // 17 Evan Rodrigues
10 A.J. Greer // 70 Jesper Boqvist // 25 Mackie Samoskevich
— // 36 Patrick Giles // 26 Uvis Balinskis
42 Gus Forsling // 5 Aaron Ekblad
77 Niko Mikkola // 7 Dmitry Kulikov
34 Adam Boqvist // 88 Nate Schmidt
72 Sergei Bobrovsky
30 Spencer Knight
Scratched: None
Injured: Sasha Barkov (LBI), Matthew Tkachuk (ill), Jonah Gadjovich (UBI), Tomas Nosek (LTIR-UBI), Justin Sourdif (UBI)
PROJECTED VEGAS GOLDEN KNIGHTS (3-2-0) LINES
49 Ivan Barbashev // 9 Jack Eichel // 61 Mark Stone
70 Tanner Pearson // 48 Tomas Hertl // 16 Pavel Dorofeyev
21 Brett Howden // 10 Nicolas Roy // 55 Keegan Kolesar
19 Brendan Brisson // 22 Cole Schwindt // 26 Alexander Holtz
27 Shea Theodore // 7 Alex Pietrangelo
15 Noah Hanifin // 14 Nicolas Hague
3 Brayden McNabb // 2 Zach Whitecloud
35 Ilya Samsonov
33 Adin Hill
Scratched: Ben Hutton, Kaedan Korczak
Injured: William Karlsson (undisclosed), Victor Olofsson (lower body)
