Fantasy Hockey Impact: The Florida Panthers have fired their head coach Kevin Dineen and named Peter Horachek the interim coach.

The Panthers get: The coach of the 14th place team in the AHL’s West. I anticipate that the interim tag will remain and a more experienced coach will be brought in by next week. The Panthers aren’t scoring goals and San Antoinio is the fourth-lowest scoring team in the AHL.

Fantasy Players Impacted: Unless your team starts with a “P” and ends with a “iladelphia”, the players respond to a coaching change. Chances are, for the short term, the players will put points on the board. Jonathan Huberdeau will be first in line, with Aleksander Barkov second.

Here are the line combos from last game:

There sill be some juggling as the new coach tries some things. I think he puts Huberdeau and Barkov back together, as well as Versteeg and Fleischmann. That should get those two pairs going. And Brad Boyes should get another shot and a fresh start on one of those lines. This would likely mean that Upshall and Matthias lose their skilled linemates.

Don’t look for Drew Shore to get called back up. He needs to recapture his offensive game at the AHL level and has just three points in nine AHL games.

Fantasy Players this helps, in order:

1. Huberdeau

2. Barkov

3. Versteeg

4. Fleischmann

5. Brian Campbell

6. Dmitri Kulikov

Fantasy Players this hurts, in order:

1. Scottie Upshall

2. Shawn Matthias