Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting.

                                                                   VS.

Tonight the Florida Panthers visit Music City to take on the Nashville Predators.  Florida who has won four straight on the road will attempt to continue the trend however, they haven’t won in Nashville in nearly a decade going all the way back to December of 1999.  Nashville had won seven in a row overall before losing to the St. Louis Blues Friday night by a score of 3-1.  The Predators had 38 shots on goal against the Blues but only Dave Scatchard managed to get one past Chris Mason in the third period.

Similar to the Panthers of late, the Predators failed to capitalize on five power play advantages which could have turned the game thier way.  Seems that teams that are on the cusp of playoff contention always have problems with the man advantage.  If anyone expects to be in the playoffs your PP has to get the job done.

Nashville’s leading point getter is J.P. Dumont who leads the team with 16.  Much maligned forward David Legwand is hot for Nashville with 8 points in his last 6 games after a terribly slow start to the season.  Goaltender Pekka Rinne is leading the hot Predators with a 10-2 record and a 1.86 GAA in his last 12 games.

Tomas Vokoun who was traded by Nashville to the Panthers gets the night off and backup Scott Clemmensen will get the start for Florida.    I did forget to mention in my post game review of last nights game against the Leafs that rookie defenceman Dmitry Kulikov scored twice for the Panthers, and seems to have settled down a bit at the quarter point of the season.  Kulikov who still is a -7, has been showing more signs of reliability and steadyness in his game as he has averaged about 16 minutes of ice time.  Lazy Ass now leads the Panthers in points with 20 and is a +4.  He has too many assists (13) for my taste though and we need him to score more goals.  That’s what we pay him for and I’d like to see him take more shots.  He does have a wicked wrister to go with a pretty decent slap shot.

The big battle of the night however could be Big Mac of the Panthers and Wade Belak of Nashville of he dresses.  Belak has been bothered by a groin injury and has missed his last couple of games.  If however he’s in the lineup, you can circle his name on your fight card to go against Big Mac.  The sole purpose of these 2 is just that.  Fighting.  don’t expect much else from them as getting 5 minutes or less a night won’t get them many chances for much else.

Ok Panthers, time to turn it around tonight.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers