Florida also has a game to play before this one: Sunday at Anaheim, the middle stop of a California swing that began in San Jose. That game will show whether Forsling can go and who centers the top line without Barkov, and those two answers matter more for Tuesday than anything Florida has shown so far. Expect the Panthers' lineup to look different by puck drop than it does today.
The Kings come in with the opposite problem: they've been scoring fine and keeping nothing out. LA gave up 8 to Colorado in a 4-goal loss in its first game, then went to San Jose and blew 2 separate chances against a thin, banged-up Sharks roster. The Kings scored first, gave up 3 in the second period to trail 3-2, scored twice in the third to tie it 4-4, and needed a shootout after a scoreless overtime. That's 12 goals allowed in 2 games, and the defense in front of the net has been the problem, not the offense.
So the two teams have opposite problems. Florida has strangled games when healthy. The opener at Carolina was a 1-0 overtime game. But a 4-3 loss to San Jose once Barkov went down suggests their defensive structure leans hard on him being on the ice. The Kings are rested and at home, with nothing on the schedule between the Sharks game and this one. The Panthers will be playing their 3rd road game in 6 days, though the hop from Anaheim to downtown LA is about as easy as NHL travel gets.
The early board has Florida as a short road favorite, so the market still respects the Panthers' structure even with a depleted roster. Whether it should comes down to things nobody knows yet: whether Forsling's upper body cooperates, how Florida's patched-up center group holds up in Anaheim, and whether the Kings can get through 60 minutes without one bad period. They haven't managed that in either of their first 2 games.