{"id":890860,"date":"2026-10-22T14:44:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T14:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/890860\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T14:44:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T14:44:15","slug":"game-preview-florida-panthers-pittsburgh-penguins-10-22-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/890860\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Preview: Florida Panthers @ Pittsburgh Penguins 10\/22\/2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who: Florida Panthers (5-3-2, 12 points, 4th place Atlantic Division) @ Pittsburgh Penguins (3-6-1, 7 points, 7th place Metropolitan Division)<\/p>\n

How to Watch: Locally televised game on Sportsnet Pittsburgh and Scripps, streaming for out of market at ESPN+<\/p>\n

Pens\u2019 Path Ahead: The Pens get to enjoy some time at home, and a somewhat light schedule coming up. They play again on Saturday, hosting Nashville then get four days off before the Utah Mammoth come to town next Thursday.<\/p>\n

Opponent Track: The Panthers were in action last night in Ottawa for Brady Tkachuk\u2019s return to the city where he started his NHL career, losing a 5-1 contest against a hot crowd. Prior to that, Florida won their last three games (CBJ, VAN, SEA). After tonight their road trip continues going to Chicago over the weekend.<\/p>\n

Season Series: Tonight\u2019s the only time FLA is playing in the \u2018Burgh this season. The Pens head down to Florida on December 10th and then again on March 4th to finish out the three-game set.<\/p>\n

Hidden Stat: Pittsburgh enters today\u2019s game with points in six-straight games versus Florida (4-0-2), per Pens PR.<\/p>\n

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

Brady Tkachuk – Sam Bennett – Matthew Tkachuk<\/p>\n

Carter Verhaeghe – Sam Reinhart – Lars Eller<\/p>\n

Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Sandis Vilmanis<\/p>\n

Boko Imama – Cole Schwindt – Garnet Hathaway<\/p>\n

Gustav Forsling \/ Aaron Ekblad<\/p>\n

Nikko Mikkola \/Seth Jones<\/p>\n

Dmitry Kulikov \/Radko Gudas<\/p>\n

Goalies: Akira Schmid and Cooper Black<\/p>\n

Potential scratches: Uvis Balinskis, Cole Reinhardt<\/p>\n

Injured Reserve: Aleksander Barkov, Brad Marchand, Jonah Gadjovich, Jacob Markstrom<\/p>\n

Injury bug has been biting the Panthers hard so far this season. Barkov went down with a knee injury (fortunately on the other leg from the knee that kept him out all of last season), Marchand joined him soon after. Starting goalie Markstrom is now outTall goalie alert?! The undrafted 25-year old Cooper Black could be making his NHL debut tonight being as Schmid played last night in Ottawa. Black stands 6\u20198\u201d and has played mostly with AHL Charlotte since turning pro in 2024. Black would set the record for tallest NHL goalie in league history, surpassing Ben Bishop and a handful of others listed at 6\u20197\u201d.<\/p>\n

Season stats
via hockeydb<\/a> (last night\u2019s results not included)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Brady Tkachuk registered two hat tricks in his first nine games as a Panther and no goals in the other seven.Hat tricks have been en vogue for the team, both Bennett and Verhaeghe had three-goal nights a few days ago against Seattle.Imama has played in all the games this season, after only playing two NHL games for Pittsburgh last season (and 16 the year before in 2024-25).Goalie was going to be the big question for the Panthers after letting Sergei Bobrovsky go and so far the results have been\u2026ok enough I guess? Markstrom and Schmid don\u2019t need great individual stats, as long as they can hang in there and keep the goals down (which, Markstrom\u2019s 2.21 GAA through the first six games definitely qualifies) that should be all this team needs to handle business over the rest of the ice.<\/p>\n

Key to the game: Florida\u2019s tough defense, the Penguins\u2019 not so tough defense..<\/p>\n

It\u2019s early but the Panthers are showing that their drop-off last season might be a one-year aberration, rebounding their goal shares (top right corner) in a major way so far in 2026-27.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Cats don\u2019t give up a lot of opportunities as the NHL\u2019s top team in limited expected goals. If there\u2019s a ray of hope, it\u2019s that the goaltending hasn\u2019t matched the defense and prone to allow goals (and Florida could be playing a first-time NHLer tonight in net\u2026)<\/p>\n

On the flip side, the bigger battle might be in front of the Pens\u2019 net. With a pair of Tkachuks and other net-front players like Bennett, Reinhart and Lundell, Pittsburgh\u2019s beleaguered defense is going to have their hands full keeping the front of the crease clear for their goalies. This has been an obvious and glaring flaw for the team in their first 10 games, it\u2019s going to receive a major test tonight in that department.<\/p>\n

Florida has won a pair of Stanley Cups recently, they have a lot of stars and high-profile players. Barkov, the Tkachuks, Marchand, a couple of Team Canada caliber players (Reinhart and Bennett). A former No. 1 overall pick in Ekblad. Seth Jones. The list goes on and on.<\/p>\n

One of my favorites, that doesn\u2019t draw a lot of attention is their third line, a layer even below the hidden gem level of players like Verhaeghe and Forsling that Florida found off the relative scrap heap and turned into key contributors. Lots of people know about Anton Lundell, a former high first round pick that Florida balks at trading every time they acquire a high-profile player it seems to come out the first request was to include him. They won\u2019t do that, even if it means getting a player back like Dylan Larkin. There\u2019s a reason for it, Lundell is one of the most polished and strongest all-around players in the game and an ideal third line center to fill-in behind all those stars.<\/p>\n

Another player that\u2019s a personal favorite, and perhaps as instrumental for that line as Lundell is Eetu Luostarinen. Not many overly know or appreciate him all that much, though Florida does – they locked Luostarinen up to an eight-year extension this summer ($5.0m annual cap hit). Salaries are getting high for everyone, that could be a good deal for years to come. Luostarinen is a player best seen in person, he\u2019s always in immaculate position on the ice. Great at forechecking, physical, superb at wall battles and winning pucks back. His offense stats don\u2019t exactly pop or command a ton of attention, but he\u2019s just a completely solid player. He\u2019s the type of glue guy that is frequently found on championship teams, the stars will draw more of the limelight, yet having the perfect players for the tougher roles is just as critical.<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m excited to see the third member of that line these days, 22-year old Sandis Vilmanis. The 22-year old Latvian is just getting going in his career with 29 NHL games – if he can hang and compliment Luostarinen and Lundell as another sneaky good bottom-six forward for Florida that will just add to their riches in that department.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Evgeni Malkin – Sidney Crosby – Bryan Rust*<\/p>\n

Ville Koivunen – Tommy Novak – Rickard Rakell<\/p>\n

Egor Chinakhov – Hendrix Lapierre – Andrei Kuzmenko<\/p>\n

Connor Dewar – Blake Lizotte – Nick Robertson<\/p>\n

Spencer Stastney \/ Erik Karlsson<\/p>\n

Declan Carlile \/ Kaeden Korczak<\/p>\n

Ilya Solovyov \/ Kris Letang<\/p>\n

Goalies: Arturs Silovs and Sergei Murashov<\/p>\n

Potential Scratches: Ben Kindel, Elmer Soderblom, Sam Girard<\/p>\n

IR: Ryan Graves, Justin Brazeau, Trevor van Riemsdyk<\/p>\n

Debated putting a \u2018wait and see\u2019 for this projection. Rust was injured at the end of last game and his status hasn\u2019t yet been updated. Girard was skating before the last game, he could be getting close to drawing back in. Kindel, one would sense, isn\u2019t likely to play after being hospitalized. How things will shake out will require waiting until the morning skate.Otherwise, it\u2019s just a holding pattern for now. The Pens were off the ice Monday as they traveled back from their road trip, then got an additional day off yesterday due to the delays that ensued in their return trip home.His fault or not, Silovs has conceded five goals in four of his last five games. There\u2019s two games ahead in the coming days before a long break and as always it will be interesting to see what the Penguins do with their goalie assignments.<\/p>\n

Dubas speaking this morning<\/p>\n

Kyle Dubas is expected to give a statement this morning to presumably update the status of Kindel and the events of Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who: Florida Panthers (5-3-2, 12 points, 4th place Atlantic Division) @ Pittsburgh Penguins (3-6-1, 7 points, 7th place…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":890861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[128082,385,99],"class_list":["post-890860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-game-preview","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=890860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/890861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=890860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=890860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}