Columbus Blue Jackets at Florida Panthers Preview, Lineups, and More
Columbus Blue Jackets head to Sunrise for the Florida Panthers opening night.
Tonight the Columbus Blue Jackets look to ruin the celebration taking place in south Florida. The Panthers kickoff their season at home with a quarter century celebration.
Hard to believe that this team has been playing hockey in the Sunshine State for 25 years but the barn will be packed tonight for that party.
Columbus Blue Jackets Line-Up
Artemi Panarin – Pierre-Luc Dubois – Cam Atkinson
Columbus Blue Jackets
Nick Foligno – Alexander Wennberg – Anthony Duclair
Boone Jenner – Riley Nash – Josh Anderson
Sonny Milano – Lukas Sedlak – Oliver Bjorkstrand
Duclair again finds himself on the second line with Wennberg and Foligno who are both coming off of their best games of the season thus far.
Markus Nutivaara – Ryan Murray
Adam Clendening – Scott Harrington
Gabriel Carlsson has been sent down to Cleveland which leaves Dean Kukan, Scott Harrington and Adam Clendening left to fight it out for the final spots on the blue line. Clendening has been the second most surprising player on the team after Duclair.
Joonas will be in between the pipes tonight for his second game of the season. While there wasn’t any reason to read into Joonas starting in Detroit over Bob, this start raises some eyebrows. The Jackets have had a day off and will have another day off before they play in Tampa. So why not start Bob in all three? How Torts handles this situation going forward will be fascinating to watch.
Florida Line-Up
Evgenii Dadonov – Aleksander Barkov – Nick Bjugstad
Jonathan Huberdeau – Vincent Trocheck – Mike Hoffman
Frank Vatrano – Jared McCann – Denis Malgin
Maxim Mamin – Juho Lammikko – Colton Sceviour
Those top two lines might be the second best top two lines in the East behind Toronto. Barkov is the fourth best center in the league and Trocheck and Huberdeau are incredible together. Throw in a 30 goal scorer like Hoffman in the mix and that is a fantastic second line.
Jacob MacDonald – Alexander Petrovic
The top pair is fantastic but the Jackets should have an advantage when Yandle and Ekblad aren’t on the ice.
Reimer will get some more starts as Roberto Luongo is on the injured reserve. The Panthers called up Michael Hutchinson from Springfield to back up Reimer.
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Game Information
- Game: Columbus Blue Jackets (2-1-0) at Florida Panthers (0-0-1)
- Time: 7 PM
- Location: BB&T Arena, Sunrise Florida
- TV: Fox Sports Ohio, Fox Sports Go
- Radio: 97.1 The Fan (Columbus, OH)
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The Jackets look to start their Florida road trip out on the right foot with the back up goalie in net. Expect puck drop to be a little later than 7 PM with all of the pregame festivities taking place tonight.