The Panthers just got some bad news...

Florida Panthers just got some bad news regarding their 22-year-old forward. We're going to be talking about his injury, how long he could be out for, and the man that has been called up to be instead for an undetermined amount of time right now. This is Panthers Digest. I'm your host, Greg Andrews. Comment, like, share, subscribe, hype up the video. Appreciate all you guys tuning in, supporting me, the channel, and your Florida Panthers. We're going to get into all that stuff and a little bit more, a little pregame chat, a little bit look at last night, yesterday's terrible game. Um... Still just cannot believe when they look like they're playing so great and all of a sudden they just, yeah, just the poor passing, the poor decision-making that are turning the pucks over in terrible areas. My God. We'll get into all that stuff right now, but I want to talk about what's going on with Sandis Vilmanis. That hit by Tom Wilson was dirty. I'm not going to replay it for you. I don't even want to waste my time with it. That it's pretty deplorable to see a player when he's. Walking off the ice, or skating off the ice and walking down the tunnel, starting to jaw back. I know Mama had some words for him, but saying, you know, you dropped a bunch of F-bombs, saying that, you know, he fell into the boards. You know, I just, it wasn't a bad hit. It's a BS call, all that. Dude, Vilmanis was against the boards, about maybe a foot away from it to start. Then he skated a little bit back and got about three feet away. Players need to understand, if a player is doing that, And you're coming up behind him to... Check him. Put a body on him and get a hit, a big hit. Know that if you're coming at him from an angle that's going to push him towards the boards, he's going to fall into the boards. Vilmanis didn't just, oh, whoopsie, I got hit and I'm trying to draw a penalty. No, he got blindsided, checked in the back, his head went right into the stanchion that sticks out at the base of where the glass is. I mean, you could see it clear as day, and it looks like he almost got part of his face here into that boards. Hopefully the visor saved him, but his head nailed the boards. So, what exactly is Paul Maurice saying about this? He's doing his usual kind of thing where he skirts around and dances around a little bit about, hey, I don't want to say anything about it, because they said, what did you think about the hit by Tom Wilson on Vilmanis? This is what he had to say. First off, he's going to talk about... So he'll get looked at in terms of Vilmanis. He'll get looked at by the doctors tomorrow, but probably have to wait to get him back to see our guys in Florida before we have a real good idea on the hit. He says, I'll leave that to the Department of Player Safety. He always takes that road because he doesn't want to be the guy that says, I thought it was dirty. I thought it was this. He's not that kind of coach who's going to call out a player and say, hey, man, that was disgusting. It shouldn't be done. That's something that shouldn't be tolerated. Players have to be smarter, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Paul Maurice isn't that guy. Whenever there's hits that happen to his players or his players dish them out to other guys and their opponents, he leaves it up to the Department of Player Safety. But as far as Vilminus and the time he could be missing, this is the thing I want to talk about. I would believe this is probably a concussion protocol thing, and he looked like he was seeing stars when he was laying on the ice, you know, his knees were up. Feet were up in the air. I mean, it was a crazy thing to see. But you see there the numbers on the season so far. Seven points. Having a very, very productive season so far. Has been great on that line with Verhaage and Reinhardt. Too bad that we're going to be seeing him out for an undetermined amount of time right now. But I have a feeling we're going to be seeing him out for a little bit. That's why they have called up Jack Devine. Unfortunately, again, for Vilmanis, but here we go. Jack Devine has been called up by the Florida Panthers. He's got nine goals and 12 points with the Charlotte Checkers this season, so he's having a very good year, and he will be in the game today. Lundell is questionable as well. Nothing major with him. Paul Murray said he's fine. I bet he's dealing with some personal issue, whatever. Who knows? But he's okay. He's questionable for the game. Let's hope he is going to be in the lineup. On one of those lines, excuse me. Hopefully he'll be back playing right beside Luce Reinen and Eller, hopefully. But if that's not the case, I will show you what the lines should look like for the game that happens in 50 minutes. But yeah, unfortunate for Vilmanis. It's just, it's terrible news when you're like, okay, you've got to call up a guy, which means that player is going to be out when they're saying, oh, he'll get looked at by doctors tomorrow, but we want him to see our guys back in Florida. Okay. So that's not good. So he's not playing for the rest of the road trip. We know that. But how much more time is he going to miss? Here we are again, another player down. A guy who's starting to find a very good rhythm with his game and finding the production that needs to get there and starting to vibe with the guys on his line. Just so unfortunate. But anyways, let's take a look at the game. That's going to happen in 50 minutes against the Bruins. The Bruins have won three straight guys. Trying to keep the streak alive. Panthers game, I'm just going to be very brief with the one that we played against the Capitals yesterday. Great for a period, horrible for two. Brady Kachuk. I thought we was going to get another hat trick. I thought we were going to look at him just crushing it this season. He is playing so great. But I just don't understand, like, who the hell was Kulikov passing to in our defensive third, right in front of the goal? What was he doing? Just like, it's careless, careless play with the puck. Not keeping your head up and trying to make a beautiful, crisp pass to one of your teammates. Turnovers. I've said this already. Why are we so bad with turnovers in horrible areas? It's been Kulikov. It's been Gudis at times. It has also been some of our stronger players. It's happened, but I would say more it's happened with our defensemen than it has with our forwards. So let's take a look at what is going on here. Here are. Some stat lines for the last 10 games. Panthers are not playing bad, I already said. I know it switches things up for the record in the last 10 games, but just take a look here. You guys can read. You can see the Bruins are 7-2-1. You see the goals that they're averaging. We're averaging 3.6. They're 3.7. We have six assists. They have 5.8. Things are pretty close in terms of that, except when we get to the penalties. We're committing way too many penalties still, but so do they. We have to be great on special teams today. We cannot let the Bruins get in their five-on-four, set up, and start to take it to us. They've been good this season on the PK. They've been good this season on the power play. Can't have stupid penalties. Can't do that, guys. Let's hope we can control that portion of the game. As far as the lines, here's what we're looking at with Jack Devine in the lineup now. There's nothing we can do. Imam is still going to be there. I know some people are kind of throwing up their arms like, guys, I've had enough of this guy. He's not doing anything. He's goose eggs across the board every single game. He's not contributing, really doing anything. He had literally six shifts in the last game and only played a little, about five and a half minutes, I think, a little over that. He had, I think, three hits and one shot on net and minus one on the ice. I know some people are frustrated with him. I think we've got to see how it still plays out. As things roll forward, especially when we start getting healthy. He's not going anywhere until that happens, guys. Once Barkov comes back, once Marchand comes back, once Vilmanis comes back, Lundell is back. When all those names are there, then we have to see what happens with that fourth line. Because Eller is going to shift down to that. We know where's Vilmanis going to be? Probably on that fourth line with Garnett Hathaway, which means and Schwint and Cole Reinhardt will all go back to the AHL. But anyways, here are the lines. We already know our top line. Second line, interesting. The two Reinharts with Verhege. Then Lusterainen, Eller, Devine. Hathaway, Schwinn, and Mamadi. You see there. And we have Balinskas in there still for Gudis. Like I said yesterday, I think something is going on with Gudis. I think we're going to see a lot more of Balinskas in the time being. For this road trip especially, maybe we'll see Gudis when we come back from the trip. But I think he needs rest. So let's take a look at the matchups. Obviously, a lot of things are going to favor the Boston Bruins. Our power play is actually better than theirs, but they have been consistent with it. I've watched some of their power plays and they know how to move the puck. We are great on the PK. Look at that. Look at the numbers. We should hopefully take over in that aspect. I mean, we looked great with that five-minute advantage that we had yesterday after Wilson hit Vilnius and they scored. I thought they were going to score probably two goals. They just couldn't sneak one past the Capitals netminder. I don't know how the hell we couldn't get more than. Then the shots that we did and we couldn't squeak one past. I mean, we made him look very good. He was making some crazy saves. Yeah. Anyways, Markstrom will be in net. That's the other thing I want to tell you guys. Markstrom is in net. It's going to be Markstrom versus Swayman. I will show you that in the next slide here. But you see everything pretty much favors the Boston Bruins where it matters. The goals for and it goes against average. You can see they almost have a one and a half goal differential from goals for to goals against. That's how they're winning games. They're putting them up and they're playing good defense. Alright, shots for, shots against, whatever, penalty minutes, we're pretty close. 220 for us, 202 for them, so this one could be a bloodbath, guys. This could be very physical, well, it's going to be very physical. We are the most physical team in the NHL. I think they're up there as well. And this is going to be one of those games where we're probably going to see a lot of penalties. I think we're going to see some fights. It's going to be crazy. So get ready. Get your popcorn ready. Don't take your eyes off. I know some of you will watch football, but this is a game I don't think you're going to want to miss. If you want to watch football, definitely record this if you can. So anyways, our PK is better. We're better on the special teams overall. I'm thinking we need to take advantage of that. Our odd man, when we're up a man, we need to make sure we are delivering And we are scoring. At will, but Swayman has been amazing this season. 2.31 goals against, .913 save percentage, and DiPietro's having a great season too. Look at that, 2.21, .925. Insane. Eight wins, three losses, one OTL. DiPietro's got four wins and only one loss. Look at our numbers. My God, like we, our defense has just been insufferable so far because We look great, and then all of a sudden, we just, I don't know what the hell happens. Like, the guys' heads fall off their shoulders for some reason, and they just make stupid passes, stupid plays with the puck in neutral ice or in our defensive zone. It keeps happening, and that has been our Achilles heel this entire season, guys. It's just been horrible. So very, very, very tough loss yesterday. I thought we were going to pull it out. And I've already said to you guys, we needed those two points yesterday because this game today is not going to be a cakewalk. This is going to be probably the hardest game we've played the entire season beside the Carolina game to start the season. This is going to be the toughest game so far in our schedule. If they can come away with a W, oh my goodness, this is going to save this road trip right now. Faltering yesterday just killed us, losing that two points to a Capitals team that we are clearly better than, but costly turnovers are killing us right now, and we all know Paul Maurice knows that. We all know he's going to try to fix that heading into this game, so we'll see how this goes, but anyways, I'm going to get out of here, guys. I'm going to get ready for the game. Comment on the hit that Wilson did to Vilminas. How long do you think Vilminas will be out? Do you think it is a concussion? I believe it is. We'll find out more, obviously, in the next few days. But tell me what you think about all that. What do you think about Jack Devine coming up? I do like the fact that now he has a shot to maybe make something happen. He's been playing great in the AHL. I was kind of hoping he might be on that line with Carter Verhaeghe and Sam Reinhart. But you got to put the guy who's got more experience on there. Cole Reinhart is definitely a more offensive threat. And we know he can deliver. So hopefully something will happen. We'll see some big time things going on. And it should be a really physical game. So anyways, let's hope Jack Devine steps up and has some big plays in him this afternoon. That's it, guys. Comment down below on all the stuff. And go Cats!