Game Preview: Pittsburgh Penguins @ Florida Panthers 1/3/2025

01/03/2025 08:28 AM

Welcome to 2025 Penguins hockey!

Who: Pittsburgh Penguins (17-17-5, 39 points, 4th place Metropolitan Division) @ Florida Panthers (23-14-2, 48 points, 2nd place Atlantic Division)

When: 7:00 p.m. ET

How to Watch: SportsNet Pittsburgh and Scripps for the local markets, NHL Network nationally

Pens' Path Ahead: Hope you had a nice holiday season, because business is about to pickup for the Penguins. Pittsburgh begins a stretch today where they'll play 10 games in the day 18 days through Jan. 20th. The next stop is in Carolina (6:00pm start!) on Sunday, and then the team is back home for five-straight games that kicks off next Tuesday against the Blue Jackets. Lots of hockey coming up here.

Opponent Track: The Panthers were in action last night, hosting Carolina and losing 3-1 (after an empty net goal). This is their fourth game of a four-game home-stand, in which they are 1-2-0 after the Christmas break. Next week Florida will head west to play Colorado and Utah.

Season Series: Pittsburgh took Round 1, a 5-4 OT decision courtesy of a Bryan Rust winner (which, you might remember the Pens begin up 4-1 in the third period before Matthew Tkachuk took the game over). The teams meet a third and final time after tonight on March 23rd, back in Sunrise.

Hidden Stat: Cody Glass has picked up assists in back-to-back games (2A). With a point tonight, he can establish a new season-long point streak and give him his first point streak of three or more games since Feb. 21-26, 2023 (3 game streak, 1G-3A), per Pens PR.

Getting to know the Panthers

Projected lines

FORWARDS

Evan Rodrigues - Aleksander Barkov - Sam Reinhart

Eetu Luostarinen - Sam Bennett - Matthew Tkachuk

Carter Verhaeghe - Anton Lundell - Jesper Boqvist

A.J. Greer - Tomas Nosek - Mackie Samoskevich

DEFENSEMEN

Gustav Forsling / Aaron Ekblad

Uvis Balinskis / Dmitry Kulikov

Nate Schmidt / Adam Boqvist

Goalies: Spencer Knight and Sergei Bobrovsky (who played last night)

Potential Scratches: Niko Mikkola (injury), Jonah Gadjovich

IR: None

—I'm sorry, Uvis Balinskis is about the funniest name in history. But in a serious note, is Florida really going to make a run again with this blueline? (Once you get past the very solid first pair, anyways). Doesn't look that good on paper, but that hasn't hampered them too much this season. Having an amazing top-nine forward group like they do goes a long way.

—This lineup has scored 0, 3 and 1 goals in the last three games. Happens in stretches but might be a great time to catch Florida on the schedule. They're on a b-2-b and presumably going to play a backup goalie that hasn't been special — and their offense isn't exactly clicking at the moment.

Player stats

(via hockeydb)

Note: does not include last night's game

—Barkov and Tkachuk have missed a handful of games, but otherwise the Panthers have been incredibly stable this season as far as keeping their top players in the lineup. Pretty impressive for a team coming off two SCF runs in a row, it looked like the Penguins ran out of gas in 2010 and 2018 at different points later on in the season when they were in that position, but for now it's been all systems go through the first half of the season in Florida.

—Sam Reinhart got paid and while he's not close to his 57-goal season last year, it can't be considered a poor investment to keep him around so far considering he leads the team by a wide margin in goals and also in points.

Team matchups

Like many teams, the Penguins don't match up well with the Panthers, who did just win the Stanley Cup. Florida did just give up 40+ shots last night (albeit to the shoot-heavy Carolina team) so it'll be interesting to see how much of their defensive game shows up tonight on the second end of the b-2-b.

And now for the Pens

Projected lines

FORWARDS

Rickard Rakell - Sidney Crosby - Bryan Rust

Michael Bunting - Evgeni Malkin - Anthony Beauvillier

Drew O'Connor - Cody Glass - Philip Tomasino

Matt Nieto - Blake Lizotte - Noel Acciari

DEFENSEMEN

Matt Grzelcyk / Erik Karlsson

Marcus Pettersson / P.O. Joseph

Ryan Graves / Ryan Shea

Goalies: Tristan Jarry, Alex Nedeljkovic

Potential Scratches: Kevin Hayes, Jesse Puljujarvi

IR: Owen Pickering, Kris Letang

—The Pens stayed the night in Detroit for New Years and practiced up there on the first before heading down to Florida. Sometimes with a break for a couple days the team will head home even with the next game on the road, but getting an extra day of Florida sunshine (and a day off yesterday) was surely an appreciated perk of the scheduling.

—Letang was moved to IR but has been skating on his own and "progressing" so it doesn't sound like his stint on the injured list will be lasting terribly long. Pickering may even be a step ahead considering he's practicing with the team but has not yet been officially cleared to return to play games.

—Puljujarvi hinted at a trade request and is talking already of a "new opportunity" but being as no NHL team claimed him off waivers earlier this week it doesn't look like there are any takers for him. I guess it was nice for the Penguins to offer him up and present the chance for him to go somewhere but no one else was interested. That makes for an interesting dynamic, being as Pittsburgh didn't assign him to the AHL immediately after clearing but also doesn't look to have any plans to get him in their NHL lineup anytime soon.

King Karl

Encouraging signs here:

From Pens PR:

Defenseman Erik Karlsson enters tomorrow's game with seven points (1G-6A) over his last seven games. Going back further, Karlsson has recorded 14 points (1G-13A) over his last 16 games and in that span, only four NHL blueliners have recorded more points:

Most Points Since Nov. 27, NHL Defensemen

Player GP G A PTS

Quinn Hughes 14 4 18 22
Zach Werenski 18 5 15 20
Cale Makar 16 3 13 16
Lane Hutson 16 2 13 15
Erik Karlsson 16 1 13 14