Lundell, Gadjovich Out for Florida Panthers vs. St. Louis Blues

SUNRISE — Anton Lundell and Jonah Gadjovich will both miss their fourth consecutive game with an illness as the Florida Panthers play host to the St. Louis Blues on Thursday night.

Coach Paul Maurice is “hopeful” that Lundell can return to the lineup Saturday against the Vegas Golden Knights.

Lundell and Gadjovich both joined the Panthers for morning skate on Thursday.

In the meantime, Will Lockwood will remain in the lineup on the fourth line and Kevin Stenlund continues in Lundell’s spot as the third line center.

“The big value Kevin brings is on the penalty kill,” Maurice said of the 6-foot-6 forward who has seven goals in 31 games this season.

“Our penalty kill has been very strong and he is a big, big part of that. So when you slide a player like that up, you shouldn’t lose anything defensively on that line. He has Eetu Luostarinen on his left wing, they are both a penalty killing pair, so they should be solid there.

“But you’d like to see some scoring off that line at some point.”

— The starting goalies: Sergei Bobrovsky against Joel Hofer.

ON DECK

ST. LOUIS BLUES @ FLORIDA PANTHERS 

• When: Thursday, 7 p.m.
• Where: Amerant Bank Arena, Sunrise
• TV/Streaming: Bally Sports Florida, ESPN+
• Radio: WQAM 560-AM; 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 (-210); Puck line (-1.5, +115); Over/Under 6.5 (+100/-120)
• This Season — At Florida: Thursday. At St. Louis: Jan. 9.
• Last Season: Blues won 2-0
  
• All-time Regular Season Series: St. Louis leads 26-12-1, 3 ties
• Up Next for the Panthers: Saturday vs. Vegas, 3 p.m.

PROJECTED FLORIDA PANTHERS (17-10-2) LINES

17 Evan Rodrigues // 16 Sasha Barkov // 13 Sam Reinhart

23 Carter Verhaeghe // 9 Sam Bennett // 19 Matthew Tkachuk

27 Eetu Luostarinen // 82 Kevin Stenlund // 21 Nick Cousins

67 Will Lockwood // 18 Steven Lorentz // 94 Ryan Lomberg

42 Gus Forsling // 5 Aaron Ekblad

77 Niko Mikkola // 62 Brandon Montour

91 Oliver Ekman-Larsson // 7 Dmitry Kulikov

41 Anthony Stolarz

72 Sergei Bobrovsky

Scratched: Josh Mahura, Justin Sourdif

Injured: Anton Lundell (IR-illness), Jonah Gadjovich (illness)

PROJECTED ST. LOUIS BLUES (15-15-1) LINES

89 Pavel Buchnevich // 18 Robert Thomas // 25 Jordan Kyrou

63 Jake Neighbours // 10 Brayden Schenn //42  Kasperi Kapanen

20 Brandon Saad // 12 Kevin Hayes //13 Alexey Toropchenko

28 Mackenzie MacEachern // 70 Oskar Sundqvist // 79 Sammy Blais 

4 Nick Leddy // 55 Colton Parayko

47 Torey Krug // 72 Justin Faulk

 6 Marco Scandella // 75 Tyler Tucker

30 Joel Hofer

50 Jordan Binnington

Scratched: Nikita Alexandrov, Scott Perunovich

Injured: None