Florida and Washington are each trying to pick up a big victory after suffering several losses recently

The Florida Panthers continue their pre-Thanksgiving homestand with another challenging opponent on Monday.

Florida has lost five of their past six games and will now welcome the Washington Capitals to Sunrise.

It’s been a tough stretch for the Panthers, not being able to point to any injuries or ailments that are limiting their roster.

Nope, it’s just been a collective struggle over the past couple weeks, and it’s clearly not an easy fix.

The Capitals are also a team looking to turn around recent fortunes, but they’ve got a good reason for the sudden change in results.

Washington has dropped two straight after losing star forward Alex Ovechkin to a lower-body injury that will keep him out for the next several weeks.

Ovechkin had been on a tear, lighting the lamp at an exceptional pace as he chased down the all-time goals record held by The Great One, Wayne Gretzky, which stands at 894.

There was a growing hope that Ovie, who was up to 868 after he scored 15 goals in 18 games this season, could catch Gretzky’s mark this season.

He’s only 26 goals away, which at the pace he’d been on, seems like a sure thing.

For now, we’ll all have to wait and see if he can catch fire again when he returns from his injury.

Ovechkin’s Capitals had also been off to a surprisingly good start to the season.

Despite the consecutive losses, Washington still sits in third place in the Metropolitan Division with a solid 13-6-1 mark.

We’ll see which team can break off their current losing streak on Monday night in Sunrise.

Here are the Panthers projected lines and for Monday's matchup with the Caps:

Evan Rodrigues – Sasha Barkov – Sam Reinhart

Carter Verhaeghe – Sam Bennett – Matthew Tkachuk

Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Mackie Samoskevich

A.J. Greer – Tomas Nosek – Jesper Boqvist

Gus Forsling – Aaron Ekblad

Niko Mikkola – Dmitry Kulikov

Nate Schmidt – Uvis Balinskis

Scratches: Jonah Gadjovich, Adam Boqvist

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