{"id":219519,"date":"2026-04-05T11:49:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T11:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/219519\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T11:49:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T11:49:10","slug":"game-preview-florida-panthers-pittsburgh-penguins-4-5-2026-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/219519\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Preview: Florida Panthers @ Pittsburgh Penguins, 4\/5\/2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

This all feels very familiar..<\/p>\n

Who: Florida Panthers (37-36-3, 77 points, 7th place Atlantic Division) @ Pittsburgh Penguins (39-22-16, 94 points, 2nd place Metropolitan Division)<\/p>\n

How to Watch: Locally broadcast on Sportsnet Pittsburgh and SCRIPPS, streaming on ESPN+<\/p>\n

Pens\u2019 Path Ahead: Ahh, the rare break is ahead. The Pens enjoy their first string of three consecutive days with no games since the Olympic break and are out of action until a road game on Thursday in New Jersey. After that is a home-and-home with the Capitals, Saturday afternoon in Pittsburgh and next Sunday in Washington.<\/p>\n

Opponent Track: The Panthers were officially eliminated from the playoffs yesterday after their 9-4 defeat to the Penguins. Florida heads north after today for a game in Montreal on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Season Series: Pittsburgh looks for a season sweep over the defending Cup champions today, having won yesterday and then back in October.<\/p>\n

Hidden Stat: The Panthers have a 16-21-0 road record this season (71-point full season pace) compared to a 21-15-3 record at home (95-point pace). Florida\u2019s 21 road regulation losses rank second worst in the NHL (Calgary, 24).<\/p>\n

Getting to know the Panthers<\/p>\n

Carter Verhaeghe – Sam Bennett – Matthew Tkachuk<\/p>\n

Mackie Samoskevich – Eetu Luostarinen – A.J. Greer<\/p>\n

Noah Gregor – Tomas Nosek – Jesper Boqvist<\/p>\n

Nolan Foote – Luke Kunin – Vinnie Hinostroza<\/p>\n

Gustav Forsling \/ Michael Benning<\/p>\n

Donovan Sebrango \/ Seth Jones<\/p>\n

Tobias Bjornfot \/ Mikulas Hovorka<\/p>\n

Goalies: Sergei Bobrovsky and Daniil Tarasov<\/p>\n

Potential scratches: Aaron Ekblad, Dmitry Kulikov, Sam Reinhart, Anton Lundell, Uvis Balinskis, Cole Reinhardt<\/p>\n

Injured Reserve: Evan Rodrigues<\/p>\n

LTIR: Aleksander Barkov, Brad Marchand, Cole Schwindt, Jonah Godjovich, Niko Mikkola<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll be interesting to see if the Panthers throw Bobrovsky back into the fire after lifting him about halfway through yesterday\u2019s game. His body language looked like he was over it. Maybe he flushes that after a day, the Panthers have basically split the starts (11 for Bob, eight for Tarasov) since the Olympic break. One of them will have to play for a second straight day and it was surely planned to be Tarasov\u2019s game coming into the weekend. Did yesterday\u2019s performance change that? We\u2019ll soon find out!Speaking of packing it in, yesterday Tkachuk (0), Bennett (1) and Verhaeghe (2) combined for three shots on goal in yesterday\u2019s game, almost none of them standing out within the game or making much of an impact. Florida doesn\u2019t have much talent left available with four of their top seven scorers on the season already out, if the ones they do have are barely out there it\u2019s going to make the struggles that much more difficult.\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>Well, it looks like three-straight years of Stanley Cup Final appearances (not to mention numerous players involved in 4 Nations and Olympics) caught up in a major way with Florida. The tone for the season was set when captain Aleksander Barkov went down with a knee injury in September and was lost for the year. It\u2019s only been downhill from there with injuries and down seasons across the board. Truly a team that\u2019s hit the wall and run out of gas, but what a run they had from 2023-25.<\/p>\n

Egor Chinakhov – Sidney Crosby – Bryan Rust<\/p>\n

Tommy Novak – Rickard Rakell – Evgeni Malkin<\/p>\n

Anthony Mantha – Ben Kindel – Justin Brazeau<\/p>\n

Elmer Soderblom – Connor Dewar – Noel Acciari<\/p>\n

Parker Wotherspoon \/ Erik Karlsson<\/p>\n

Ryan Shea \/ Connor Clifton<\/p>\n

Goalies: Stuart Skinner and Arturs Silovs<\/p>\n

Potential Scratches: Ilya Solovyov, Blake Lizotte (injured), Kevin Hayes, Ryan Graves, Jack St. Ivany<\/p>\n

IR: Filip Hallander, Caleb Jones (season-ending shoulder surgery)<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll be interesting to see for the Penguins if anyone can\u2019t answer the bell for another game today. Rust, Dewar, Kindel and Brazeau all took some lumps yesterday. Hockey players can play through a lot, and a three-day rest is on the horizon but this might be a time to give someone who isn\u2019t 100% a day off with the bigger picture in mind of hopefully getting them ready for Thursday and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This all feels very familiar.. Who: Florida Panthers (37-36-3, 77 points, 7th place Atlantic Division) @ Pittsburgh Penguins…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29,7874],"class_list":{"0":"post-219519","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-headlines","10":"tag-florida-news","11":"tag-game-preview"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}