Florida Panthers: Lines, Updates, Preview for Round 1, Game 2 vs. Tampa Bay Lightning
Anthony Cirelli will be a game-time decision for the Tampa Bay Lightning against the Florida Panthers of Game 2 of their first-round series.
TAMPA — The Florida Panthers may catch the Tampa Bay Lightning with a key piece of their lineup as they look to take a 2-0 series lead.
Anthony Cirelli is expected to be a game-time decision after he left during the second period of Tuesday night’s Game 1 with an injury.
“We’ll see if he can take warm-ups, and if he’s cleared, he’ll play,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said.
Cirelli is a key piece to Tampa Bay’s penalty kill, which Florida’s power play torched to the tune of a 3-for-3 outing on Tuesday night, and has gained a reputation as one of the NHL’s top defensive forwards.
The Lightning were caught with just 10 forwards for the second half of the game, after already opting to dress seven defensemen instead of a full fourth forward line, and the Panthers were able to wear them down quick.
Regardless of Cirelli’s status, the Panthers are not expecting that to be the case again. Tampa Bay appears to be dressing 12 forwards regardless of whether it’s Cirelli or Mitchell Chaffee and Cam Atkinson that draw into the line-up, and this is a team that still has a lot of players from its three-straight Stanley Cup Final appearances from 2020 to 2022.
“I’m just going to expect that he plays,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said. “I’m just going to assume that he plays and that he hasn’t been ruled out, and if he is going to play, he is going to play well.
“Every team will go through that. It’s almost identical to last year for us, when Sam Bennett broke his finger in Game 3 and then we miss him for five games. You win games. You might look slightly different, but this is a veteran team and there are no identity issues with it. They know exactly how they play the game and they can slot people and move people easily to do that, so we prep for everybody being in and everybody being healthy and I don’t think their identity changes or who they are or how they are going to play the game.”
The Panthers did learn a lot about their depth in Game 1.
Maurice held Matthew Tkachuk to 11:43 of time-on-ice on Tuesday in his return from a lower-body injury that kept him out for two months. While he was giving his second line a break, he gave the third and fourth lines a bit more runway against Tampa’s vaunted first line and they held up well.
The fourth line of Nico Sturm, Jesper Boqvist and Evan Rodrigues a few looks against them late in the game, and while that isn’t a match-up Maurice is looking to use every time, the Panthers have a major advantage when it comes to forward depth.
THE NEWS
Sergei Bobrovsky will start in net for the Panthers tonight.
Florida will be running with the same lineup as their Game 1 victory over Tampa Bay.
Anthony Cirelli is a game-time decision for the Lightning. He left Game 1 midway through the second period.
Tonight’s game will start at 6:30 p.m. EST and will be broadcasted locally on Scripps Sports and the Panthers Plus app. It will be broadcasted nationally on TNT.
For more information on how to catch Panthers games this season, visit nhl.com/panthers/info/how-to-watch.
PROGRAMMING NOTE: Matt Licthenstadter will be recording subscriber-exclusive podcast episodes following the conclusion of each playoff game. For Colby’s postgame stories right after the buzzer, check out the palmbeachpost.com/sports
FLORIDA PANTHERS PROJECTED LINEUP
Presented by William Raveis Real Estate
Carter Verhaeghe — Aleksander Barkov — Sam Reinhart
Mackie Samoskevich — Sam Bennett — Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen — Anton Lundell — Brad Marchand
Jesper Boqvist — Nico Sturm — Evan Rodrigues
Gustav Forsling — Seth Jones
Niko Mikkola — Dmitry Kulikov
Nate Schmidt — Uvis Balinskis
Sergei Bobrovsky
Vitek Vanecek
Scratched: Jaycob Megna, A.J. Greer, Tomas Nosek, Jonah Gadjovich
Suspended: Aaron Ekblad
Injured: Matthew Tkachuk (LTIR)
TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING PROJECTED LINEUP
Gage Goncalves — Brayden Point — Nikita Kucherov
Brandon Hagel — Nick Paul — Jake Guentzel
Conor Geekie — Yanni Gourde — Mitchell Chaffee
Zemgus Girgensons — Luke Glendenning — Cam Atkinson
Victor Hedman — J.J. Moser
Ryan McDonagh — Erik Cernak
Nick Perbix — Emil Lilleberg
Andrei Vasilevskiy
Jonas Johansson
(Lines via Gabby Shirley, FanDuel Sports Network)
Injured: Anthony Cirelli (GTD), Oliver Bjorkstrand
*Opposing team lines subject to change.