Florida is currently riding a franchise-record seven-game road winning streak
The Florida Panthers will look to enter the NHL’s annual All-Star break on a high note when they face the New York Islanders on Saturday night.
Florida is fresh off Friday night’s 3-2 shootout win over the Pittsburgh Penguins and will try to sweep a back-to-back set for the second time this season.
A win would be the Cats’ fourth in a row overall, but they come into Saturday’s game on Long Island riding a franchise-record seven-game road winning streak.
While things are humming along nicely in Pantherland, it hasn’t been quite as nice around the Islanders lately.
After holding a playoff spot for much of the season, the Isles enter play Saturday four points back of the Red Wings for the final Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference.
They’ve gone 2-7-1 over their past 10 games and last weekend, Islanders GM and President of Hockey Ops Lou Lamoriello made the sudden and surprising move to fire Lane Lambert and replace him with former Avalanche coach and Pro Hockey Hall of Famer Patrick Roy.
A fiery and intense head coach who has had success behind the bench during his time with Colorado, Roy has his work cut out for him with the Islanders.
While they’ve won just one of Roy’s first three games, the Isles have shown some promising signs of improvement.
The underlying metrics, particularly in their past two losses, have shown New York is controlling the puck with more frequency and generating consistent offense.
That’s all well and good, but with only 34 games left on their schedule, the Islanders need to start collecting wins.
They’ll have a tough test against the Panthers on Saturday, though they are catching the Cats on the second night of a back-to-back.
It’s the fourth time this season that Florida has played games on consecutive nights, and so far the Panthers are 2-0-1 on the back end of those back-to-backs.
Here are Florida’s projected lines and pairings for Saturday’s tilt on the Island:
Evan Rodrigues – Sasha Barkov – Mackie Samoskevich
Carter Verhaeghe – Sam Bennett – Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Sam Reinhart
Jonah Gadjovich – Kevin Stenlund – Ryan Lomberg
Gus Forsling – Aaron Ekblad
Niko Mikkola – Brandon Montour
Oliver Ekman-Larsson – Dmitry Kulikov
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