Florida has lost all four games on their current road trip, but will try to salvage a win on Tuesday when Brad Marchand makes his return to Boston.
One of the more frustrating and troubling Florida Panthers road trips in recent memory will come to an end on Tuesday night in Boston.
Florida has dropped each of the first four games on their five-stop roadie, and now they’ll hope to salvage two points when they face the Bruins at TD Garden.
There will be a lot of eyeballs on this game across the hockey world.
That’s because longtime Bruins star Brad Marchand will play his first NHL game in Boston since being traded to the Panthers last March.
Of Marchand’s 1,107 NHL games played, all but 17 of them have been played with the Bruins (that’s right, Marchand has only played 17 regular season games with the Panthers. He’s played 23 playoff games with Florida, though).
“I’m excited for this one, it’ll be fun to compete against guys I’ve been playing with for a long time and be on the other side of it in here,” Marchand said Monday. “I’m sure it’ll be a pretty intense game. It’ll be fun to play in front of the Bruins fans again.”
As for the road trip, the Panthers have been outscored 15-4 in the four losses, a far cry from the usual kind of production seen from the Cats.
After scoring just two goals over their past three games, Florida made some changes to their power play units on Monday.
Anton Lundell was moved up to the top unit, along with Mackie Samoskevich, as the youngsters joined Sam Reinhart, Brad Marchand and Seth Jones.
Now on the second unit are Aaron Ekblad and Sam Bennett, skating with Carter Verhaeghe, Evan Rodrigues and Eetu Luostarinen.
Here are the Panthers projected lines and pairings for Tuesday’s tilt in Boston:
Carter Verhaeghe – Sam Bennett – Sam Reinhart
Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Brad Marchand
Mackie Samoskevich – Evan Rodrigues – Jesper Boqvist
A.J. Greer – Luke Kunin – Jonah Gadjovich
Gus Forsling – Aaron Ekblad
Niko Mikkola – Seth Jones
Uvis Balinskis – Jeff Petry
Scratches: Noah Gregor, Kai Schwindt, Toby Bjornfot
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