Florida Panthers: Lines, Updates, Preview for April 14 Game vs. New York Rangers
Sam Bennett and Dmitry Kulikov will return from injury as the Florida Panthers take on the New York Rangers in the penultimate game of the regular season.
FORT LAUDERDALE — The Florida Panthers will get Sam Bennett and Dmitry Kulikov back from their respective injuries as they take on the New York Rangers in their final home game of the regular season on Monday.
Bennett was believed to be out for the rest of the regular season with an upper-body he had been managing, but he is feeling enough ahead of schedule and will dress for at least one more regular season game.
“He’s at 100 percent,” coach Paul Maurice said. “He got himself to that point, we had a little time and it was just a buffer for me. There was a chance he wouldn’t get to 100 percent for two or three more days, but he’s ready. He’s skating and he wants to play. He feels that playing games is better for him than not, so he plays.
“If there is any lingering concern, you don’t get to play. And that’s especially true for Sam because he sat out for two months and came back into the middle of a playoff series, and it was Boston and it was heavy and off he went. So, there was no reason for us to put him in with the fear of ‘we got to keep him sharp.’ He was ready and wanted to, so he goes in.”
Bennett will have a chance to add to his career-high of 50 points and his second-highest goal total of 25 after all. His best goal-total came in his first full season with Florida in 2021-22, when he scored 28 goals alongside Hart Trophy candidate Jonathan Huberdeau.
Kulikov makes his return to the lineup after sustaining an upper-body injury on March 16 against the New York Islanders. Niko Mikkola will come out of the lineup and take a rest day.
There was no concern about getting Kulikov into a game before the playoffs — as there was with Bennett — because both of them know what to expect.
What their returns actually allowed Florida to do was rest players like Mikkola, as well as the third line of Eetu Luostarinen, Anton Lundell and Brad Marchand, and Mackie Samoskevich, to avoid playing them on back-to-back days.
“Both of these men know exactly what a playoff game is going to look like, there’s no newness to this,” Maurice said. “So, even if their hands aren’t perfect, it doesn’t matter, especially with the way we play. It was just that they were 100 percent healthy.
“Now, what it does what it allows us to do is Kulikov comes in and Mikkola comes out, so it keeps him out of a back-to-back. Anybody that would play back-to-back today and tomorrow would have already sat out a game, so we’ve kept them out of seven [games] in 11 [days], which was the whole point of all of this.”
Whether the Panthers dress their star players on the back half of a back-to-back tomorrow in Tampa depends on what happens in tonight’s game.
If Florida defeats the Rangers — or at least earns a point — it still has a chance of catching the Lightning for second place and home ice in a potential playoff series. The Panthers could dress a full lineup if seeding is on the line.
They would need Tampa Bay to lose its final game against the Rangers on Thursday in regulation in the event of an overtime loss or in any fashion in the event of a win tonight.
In the event Florida loses in regulation, the game would not have any bearing on the standings and it would likely rest players like Aleksander Barkov and Gustav Forsling in that game.
The Panthers would need to take care of business on Monday night against a Rangers team that was eliminated from playoff contention over the weekend after staying in the wild card race for most of the season for that game to matter.
THE NEWS
Sergei Bobrovsky will start in net for the Panthers tonight.
Tonight’s game will start at 7:00 p.m. EST and will be broadcasted on Panthers Plus. It can also be streamed on the Panthers Plus app for local viewers or on ESPN+ for out-of-market viewers.
For more information on how to catch Panthers games this season, visit nhl.com/panthers/info/how-to-watch.
FLORIDA PANTHERS PROJECTED LINEUP
Presented by William Raveis Real Estate
Carter Verhaeghe — Aleksander Barkov — Sam Reinhart
Evan Rodrigues — Sam Bennett — Jesper Boqvist
Rasmus Asplund — Nico Sturm — Jesse Puljujarvi
A.J. Greer — Tomas Nosek — Jonah Gadjovich
Gustav Forsling — Uvis Balinskis
Dmitry Kulikov — Seth Jones
Jaycob Megna — Nate Schmidt
Sergei Bobrovsky
Vitek Vanecek
Scratched: Matt Kiersted, Eetu Luostarinen, Anton Lundell, Brad Marchand, Mackie Samoskevich, Niko Mikkola
Suspended: Aaron Ekblad
Injured: Matthew Tkachuk (LTIR)
NEW YORK RANGERS PROJECTED LINEUP
Artemi Panarin — Vincent Trocheck — Alexis Lafreniere
Will Cuylle — J.T. Miller — Mika Zibanejad
Chris Kreider — Juuso Parssinen — Jonny Brodzinski
Brett Berard — Sam Carrick — Matt Rempe
K’Andre Miller — Will Borgen
Carson Soucy — Adam Fox
Matthew Robertson — Urho Vaakanainen
Igor Shesterkin
Jonathan Quick
(Lines via DailyFaceOff.com)
*Opposing team lines subject to change.