Game Preview: Pittsburgh Penguins @ Florida Panthers January 3, 2025

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

Here’s how to watch: SportsNet Pittsburgh and Scripps for local markets, NHL Network nationally

The path of the pens lies before us: I hope you had a nice Christmas, because things are looking up for the penguins soon. Pittsburgh begins today a stretch in which they will play 10 games a day for 18 days through January 20th. The next stop is Sunday at Carolina (starts at 6 p.m.!) and then the team is back home to play five straight games against the Blue Jackets next Tuesday. A lot of ice hockey is played here.

Enemy bar: The Panthers were in action last night, hosting Carolina and losing 3-1 (after an empty-net goal). This is their fourth home game where they are 1-2-0 after the Christmas break. Next week, Florida travels west to play Colorado and Utah.

Season series: Pittsburgh won Round 1, a 5-4 OT decision thanks to a winner from Bryan Rust (you may recall that the Pens started the third period 4-1 before Matthew Tkachuk took over the game). The teams will meet for the third and final time in Sunrise after tonight, March 23rd.

Hidden statistics: Cody Glass has picked up assists in consecutive games (2A). With a point tonight he can build a new season-long points streak and give him his first points streak of three or more games since March 21-26. February 2023 (3-game series, 1G-3A), according to Pens PR.

Meet the Panthers

Projected lines

FORWARD

Evan Rodrigues – Aleksander Barkov – Sam Reinhart

Eetu Luostarinen – Sam Bennett – Matthew Tkachuk

Carter Verhaeghe – Anton Lundell – Jesper Boqvist

AJ Greer – Tomas Nosek – Mackie Samoskevich

DEFENDER

Gustav Forsling / Aaron Ekblad

Uvis Balinskis / Dmitry Kulikov

Nate Schmidt / Adam Boqvist

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

Possible scratches: Niko Mikkola (injury), Jonah Gadjovich

IR: None

—I’m sorry, Uvis Balinskis is pretty much the funniest name in history. But seriously: Will Florida really get going again with this blueline? (At least once you get past the very solid first couple). Things don’t look so good on paper, but that hasn’t affected them too much this season. Having a great top nine forward group like them goes a long way.

—This lineup has scored 0, 3 and 1 goals in the last three games. Happens in phases, but could be a good time to have Florida on the schedule. They play in B-2-B and will probably use a backup goalie who isn’t anything special – and their offense isn’t going well right now.

Player stats

(above hockeydb)

Note: Last night’s game is not included

—Barkov and Tkachuk have missed a handful of games, but otherwise the Panthers have been incredibly stable this season in terms of keeping their top players on the roster. Pretty impressive for a team that has had two SCF runs in a row. It looked like the Penguins ran out of gas at various points later in the season in 2010 and 2018 when they found themselves in this position, but right now it’s all going through the first half of the season in Florida.

—Sam Reinhart has been paid and while he hasn’t come close to his 57-goal season last year, keeping him around so far can’t be considered a bad investment considering he leads the team in goals by a large margin and also leads in points.

Team fights

Like many other teams, the Penguins don’t compete well with the Panthers, who just won the Stanley Cup. Florida only took over 40 shots last night (albeit to the shot-heavy Carolina team), so it will be interesting to see how much of their defensive game comes out on the B-2-B’s second end tonight.

And now to the pens

Projected lines

FORWARD

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

DEFENDER

Matt Grzelcyk / Erik Karlsson

Marcus Pettersson / PO Joseph

Ryan Graves/Ryan Shea

Goalkeeper: Tristan Jarry, Alex Nedeljkovic

Possible scratches: Kevin Hayes, Jesse Puljujarvi

IR: Owen Pickering, Kris Letang

– The Pens stayed in Detroit over New Year’s Eve and practiced up there on the first day of the game before traveling to Florida. Sometimes the team travels home with a break of a few days, even if the next game is on the road, but an extra day in the Florida sun (and yesterday a day off) was certainly an appreciated scheduling benefit.

– Letang was placed on IR but was running on his own and “progressing,” so it doesn’t sound like his stay on the injured list will last particularly long. Pickering could even be a step further considering he has been training with the team but has not yet been officially cleared to return to games.

– Puljujarvi has hinted at a trade request and is already talking about a “new opportunity,” but since 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 of the Penguins to offer him up and give him a chance to go somewhere, but no one else was interested. This makes for an interesting dynamic, as Pittsburgh didn’t assign him to the AHL immediately upon release, but also doesn’t appear to have any plans to add him to the NHL roster anytime soon.

King Charles

Encouraging signs here:

From Pens PR:

Defenseman Erik Karlsson enters tomorrow’s game with seven points (1G-6A) in his last seven games. Moving forward, Karlsson has 14 points (1G-13A) in his last 16 games, and only four NHL blueliners have scored more points during that span:

Most points since November 27, NHL defenseman

Player GP GA 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