Game 18: Winnipeg Jets vs Florida Panthers pre-game report

The Jets are coming off a rare loss after they were outskated by the Lightning on Thursday night. The team held a quick 35 minute skate on Friday as they got set to face the defending Stanley Cup champs Panthers.

Florida is in a bit of a skid (for them) as they’ve lost their last two games although they are still 7-3-0 in their last ten games and they remain 1st in the Atlantic Division with a 11-5-1 on the season. They don’t score as often as Winnipeg and they’ve given up 18 more goals than the Jets. They are 8th in the NHL in power play and 10th in penalty kill.

Skate news:

As per colour analyst Mitchell Clinton it was an optional with only a few guys on the ice including: Eric Comrie, Morgan Barron, Haydn Fleury, David Gustafsson, Ville Heinola, Mark Scheifele, Cole Perfetti, Alex Iafallo, Neal Pionk, Dylan Coghlan, Rasmus Kupari, and Mason Appleton.

Jets projected lines & D pairs:

Connor-Scheifele-Vilardi
Perfetti-Namestnikov-Ehlers
Niederreiter-Lowry-Appleton
Barron-Kupari-Iafallo

Morrissey-DeMelo
Samberg-Pionk
Fleury-Miller

Hellebuyck
Comrie

Panthers projected lines & D pairs:

Verhaeghe – Barkov – Reinhart
Boqvist – Bennett – Tkachuk
Luostarinen – Lundell – Rodrigues
Greer – Nosek – Samoskevich

Forsling – Ekblad
Mikkola – Kulikov
Schmidt – Balinskis

Bobrovsky
Knight

As per Jameson Olive who is the Sr. Digital Content Manager for Florida in his game preview.

Up Next:

Puck drop is at 6 PM CST.  Be sure to head over to illegalcurve.com following the game for a recap of the action. Reminder to join us on the Illegal Curve Post-Game Show around 8:40 PM CST as we discuss and analyze the results of the game.