Young goaltenders lock horns as Panthers, Canadiens meet in Sunrise

The NHL’s annual holiday break has come to a close.

Half of the league’s 32 teams saw their respective schedules resume on Friday, but the Florida Panthers enjoyed an extra night before getting back at it.

Now they’ll host the Montreal Canadiens for a nice Saturday afternoon matinee at Amerant Bank Arena.

This is the first of four meetings of the season between the two Atlantic Division rivals.

Montreal arrives in South Florida with wins in six of their past 10 games.

They are currently the fifth-place team in the division, but the first Atlantic team not in a playoff spot.

Entering play Saturday the Habs are 14-17-3, seven points behind the Ottawa Senators for the final Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference.

Montreal will be starting 23-year-old rookie Jakub Dobes in goal after calling him up from the AHL’s Laval Rocket on Friday.

Dobes, a 2020 fifth round pick who has followed a strong season with Laval last year into another solid campaign this time around, will be making his NHL debut.

As for Florida, the Cats will be as close to full strength as they have been in a while.

Only defenseman Niko Mikkola and forward Jonah Gadjovich are not able to play, each dealing with respective upper-body injuries.

In goal, the Panthers will turn to backup Spencer Knight.

The young netminder is coming off a strong start in Tampa Bay on Sunday in which he picked up a win while allowing two goals on 21 shots.

On the season, Knight holds a 6-5-1 record to go with a 2.78 goals against average and .891 save percentage.

Here are Florida’s projected lines and pairings for Saturday’s matinee with Montreal:

Evan Rodrigues – Sasha Barkov – Sam Reinhart

Carter Verhaeghe – Sam Bennett – Matthew Tkachuk

Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Jesper Boqvist

A.J. Greer – Tomas Nosek – Mackie Samoskevich

Gus Forsling – Aaron Ekblad

Adam Boqvist – Dmitry Kulikov