The Florida Panthers and the Columbus Blue Jackets meet in NHL action from Nationwide Arena on Thursday night.

The Florida Panthers will be looking to add to their current 5 game winning streak following a 2-1 win over Philadelphia on Tuesday. The game was a scoreless tie through 20 minutes of play before Aaron Ekblad and Evgenii Dadonov struck in the 2nd period for the Panthers to give Florida a much-needed 2-0 advantage at the 2nd intermission. Jakub Voracek pulled a goal back for the Flyers early in the 3rd but it wasn’t enough as the Panthers would hang on for the victory. Roberto Luongo got the win to improve to 4-0-0 this season after stopping 30 of the 31 shots faced in the winning effort.

The Columbus Blue Jackets will be looking to build some momentum after a 2-1 win over the Dallas Stars on the road in their last outing. We didn’t have any scoring through 20 minutes but Cam Atkinson scored just 1:29 into the 2nd period for the Blue Jackets to give Columbus the lead, but Dallas would tie the game in the latter stages of the period to give us a 1-1 draw after 40 minutes of play. Pierre-Luc Dubois broke the deadlock midway through the 3rd to give Columbus the win. Sergei Bobrovsky got the win to improve to 6-6-0 this season after stopping 26 of 27 shots faced in the winning effort. Florida is 5-0 ATS in their last 5 games overall and 4-0 in their last 4 games against a team with a winning record while the under is 3-0-1 in their last 4 road games. Columbus is 4-9 ATS in their last 13 home games and 2-5 in their last 7 games following a win while the under is 6-1 in their last 7 games overall. Florida is 5-16 in the last 21 meetings between these two teams and 1-10 in the last 11 meetings between these two teams in Columbus. The Panthers have had barely any success in this matchup, especially at Columbus, so I can understand why most would lean towards the Blue Jackets here. However, the Panthers have been a better team on the road than Columbus has been at home this season, and Florida comes into this one red hot, so I think it’s worth taking a shot on Florida to exorcise some demons and get a win at plus money on Thursday.

Chris’s Pick Florida +110

The pick in this article is the opinion of the writer, not a Sports Chat Place site consensus.