The Chicago Blackhawks will be looking to stop a three-game skid on Thursday night, though it won’t be easy: their opponent is the reigning Stanley Cup winner and a current top-10 team, the Florida Panthers.
While the Panthers aren’t likely going to hit near 110 points again like last season, this season’s team is still a force to be reckoned with, winning almost 70 percent of their games so far. However, they are currently on a bit of a slump: after winning seven games straight, they’ve lost three of their last four. The only win in their last four games was a good one: Florida shutout the league-leading Winnipeg Jets 5-0 on Saturday night. But they followed it up with a 6-3 loss on Tuesday to the same team. The Panthers didn’t play poorly in any of their losses, honestly, but just not well enough to get the victory.
Again, despite the current lack of wins in recent game, the Panthers are one of the best teams in the league. They’re top-10 in every major shot category, including shot attempts (52.84 percent) and expected goals (52.39) at 5-on-5, both of which are eighth best in the league. Florida tends to be a better defensive team than an offensive one with just middling shot-generation numbers while being strong at shot suppression. The Panthers have been more successful when on the power play — they’re currently eighth with 23.7 percent — so keeping out of the penalty box could be key for the Blackhawks in this game.
Sam Reinhart, who leads the Panthers with 29 points (14 G, 15 A) in 19 games, is currently on an 11-game point streak, one of the longest in Panthers’ franchise history. Aleksander Barkov actually has an even better production rate (1.64 points per game), but he’s played in eight fewer games. The rest of the top-nine is good as well: Sam Bennett (18 points in 18 games) and Matthew Tkachuk (13 in 14) are both near or at a point-per-game while Anton Lundell (14 in 19), Carter Verhaeghe (13 in 19) and Evan Rodrigues (10 in 19) have been impressive as well. On the back end, our old friend Gustav Forsling has three goals and seven assists, and is one part of the top-pair along with Aaron Ekblad.
The Panthers will likely rollout a similar lineup against Chicago they did on Tuesday:
#FlaPanthers lines in warmups ⬇️ Rodrigues – Barkov – Reinhart Verhaeghe – Bennett – Tkachuk Luostarinen – Lundell – J. Boqvist Greer – Nosek – Gadjovich Forsling – Ekblad Mikkola – Kulikov Schmidt – Balinskis Bobrovsky Knight
— Jameson Olive (@jamesonolive.bsky.social) November 19, 2024 at 7:39 PM
Sergei Bobrovsky will be in net, which is something the Blackhawks might be able to take advantage of: he’s not been having a great start to the season with just a .893 save percentage. Though, of course, now that it’s been mentioned, watch him stand on his head Thursday night.
As for the Blackhawks, their current run is pretty bleak: they have just one victory in their past six games and have lost three straight. Chicago was leading the Anaheim Ducks 2-1 entering the third period on Tuesday, but the Ducks scored the equalizer and go-ahead goal in a span of just over four minutes in the third period to defeat the Blackhawks 3-2. It was frankly demoralizing for the team to once again shit the bed in the third period, where they have been outscored 26-15 this season. The only consolidation is that Connor Bedard picked up two assists, and looked like he was back to his regular offensively gifted self. Jason Dickinson was the beneficiary of both assists.
Unfortunately, the Bedard-Dickinson duo was the only combination that worked among the mess that was the lines on Tuesday. As a result, the other three lines have been shuffled a little: there was no morning skate Thursday, so below is what was rolled at Wednesday’s practice.
Blackhawks keep shuffling the lines every game. Here's today in practice: Bedard-Dickinson-Anderson Bertuzzi-Foligno-Mikheyev Hall-Donato-Teravainen Maroon-Reichel-Smith Vlasic-Murphy Allan-Martinez Kaiser-Brodie Commesso and Soderblom are the goalies, with Mrazek (personal) still absent.
— Ben Pope (@benpopecst.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 12:50 PM
The most obnoxious change to the lines is Philipp Kurashev as a healthy scratch. With how many players weren’t performing well last game, I’m not totally sure how he got singled out, but it’s whatever at this point. Hopefully at least coach Luke Richardson communicated the reason why ahead of the scratch this time.
Petr Mrazek, who missed the last game for personal reasons, is expected to be the starter against the Panthers:
Tale of the Tape
Blackhawks — Statistic — Panthers
43.71% (32nd) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 46.9% (27th)
42.37% (31st) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 45.1% (28th)
2.17 (32nd) — Goals per game — 3.23 (11th)
3.52 (29th) — Goals against per game — 2.41 (1st)
46.3% (29th) — Faceoffs — 51.3% (11th)
16.60% (28th) — Power play — 23.5% (8th)
75.76% (27th) — Penalty kill — 82.5% (6th)
(All stats from last season)
How to Watch
When: 7:30 p.m. CT
Where: United Center, Chicago
TV: N/A
Webstream: Hulu/ESPN+ (exclusively on those apps, so no CHSN issues!)
Radio: WGN 720