BOSTON –The Bruins are looking to turn things around, and lucky for them, the Florida Panthers are in town.
With the way the B’s are playing right now, though, nothing’s a sure things. Boston has lost four of its last five games, and they’re struggling in all three zones. But as bad as the Bruins are playing, the Panthers have arguably been worse — and they have been that way the entire season.
Florida comes in with one of the league’s worst records. The Panthers come in having lost nine of their last 10, with four of those losses coming in overtime. So if there’s any time for the Bruins to get going, especially with a divisional matchup with Toronto looming on Saturday, this would be the time do so.
Boston had a limited morning skate Monday, with just three players taking the ice. Those three players — Chad Johnson, Matt Bartkowski and Jordan Caron — are expected to be scratches, or in Johnson’s case, the backup goaltender on Thursday night.
Here are the projected lines for both clubs.
Bruins (8-5-1, 17 points)
Milan Lucic — David Krejci — Jarome Iginla
Brad Marchand — Patrice Bergeron — Loui Eriksson
Carl Soderberg — Chris Kelly — Reilly Smith
Daniel Paille — Gregory Campbell — Shawn Thornton
Zdeno Chara — Johnny Boychuk
Dougie Hamilton — Dennis Seidenberg
Torey Krug — Adam McQuaid
Panthers (3-8-4, 10 points)
Jonathan Huberdeau — Aleksander Barkov — Tomas Fleischmann
Kris Versteeg — Marcel Goc — Tomas Kopecky
Sean Bergenheim — Shawn Matthias — Brad Boyes
Scottie Upshall — Nick Bjugstad — Jesse Winchester
Brian Campbell — Tom Gilbert
Dmitry Kulikov — Mike Weaver
Erik Gudbranson — Ryan Whitney
