The Florida Panthers are in the midst of their first road trip of the season and they’re already navigating an injury to a key player.
Panthers captain Sasha Barkov suffered an apparent lower-body injury during Florida’s loss in Ottawa on Thursday night.
While there has been no official word on the severity of the injury, Florida made a couple roster moves on Friday that would indicate Barkov won’t be in the lineup at least on Saturday, when the Cats face the Buffalo Sabres.
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Added to the roster was training camp standout Patrick Giles.
He came close to earning an NHL job after a solid showing during the preseason, so it’s no surprise that he’s the first man called back up to the big club.
Florida will face a Sabres squad still looking for their first win of the season despite already having played three games.
Buffalo opened the season with a pair of losses to the New Jersey Devils in Prague last week before dropping their home opener to the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday.
Through three games, the Sabres have scored all of three goals.
They’ll look to get the offensive game going against a Florida group playing without one of the best defensive centers in the world.
Here are the projected lines and pairings for Saturday’s battle in Buffalo:
Carter Verhaeghe – Sam Bennett – Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Sam Reinhart
Evan Rodrigues – Jesper Boqvist – Mackie Samoskevich
Jonah Gadjovich – Patrick Giles – A.J. Greer
Gus Forsling – Aaron Ekblad
Niko Mikkola – Dmitry Kulikov
Uvis Balinskis – Nate Schmidt
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