Florida Panthers: Lines, Updates, Preview for Round 1, Game 5 vs. Tampa Bay Lightning
The Florida Panthers will play their first close-out game since Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.
TAMPA — The Florida Panthers will look to close out a series for the first time since last year’s Stanley Cup Final.
After they went up 3-0 on the Edmonton Oilers, it took them four tries to do so before they closed the series out at home in Game 7. The Panthers will have three chances to close out the Tampa Bay Lightning as they enter Game 5 of their first-round series with a 3-1 series lead.
“It’s all emotion,” coach Paul Maurice said of the challenge of closing out a series. “They will absolutely have the desperation advantage on us,a nod then we will possibly have the excitement advantage. We’d like those things to cancel out. We want our excitement, but in this situation, we need to rise to their level of desperation that I’m sure we’re going to see, and then get our focus on the fundamentals of our game.”
Stanley Cup Final struggles aside, the Panthers have fared well in close-out games in the past. Florida went 6-3 in potential close-out games in the Eastern Conference side of the bracket during their back-to-back runs to the Stanley Cup Final in 2023 and 2024, never losing more than one in a series.
The Panthers know what they are getting on the other side — the Lightning were one of the teams to beat them in a close-out game, forcing a Game 5 after Florida took a 3-0 series lead last season — and they know they have to stick to their game to close it out.
“You’re probably going to get more desperation from the opposing team than you probably have, but we’re a desperate team as well,” Matthew Tkachuk said. “We want to finish this and finish this the right way, and then play our game.
“With that being said, we’ve always had it in our heads going through our experience the past few years, our style is a seven-game series style. So, no matter what happens out there, the score, the time of the game, we’re playing every game with that mindset. So, hopefully tonight we can come out there and have a good result.”
The Panthers will do so without Aaron Ekblad who is serving a two-game suspension for elbowing Lightning forward Brandon Hagel.
“I’ll be consistent. I believed with any potential suspension, that’s not my job,”Maurice said. “This would be viewed in our room as an injury. It would be viewed no different from Sam Bennett breaking his finger last year in the Tampa series and missing five games.
“You’re going to have really good players come in and out of your lineup. Unfortunately, we’ve missed [Ekblad] 22 of the past 24 games. He didn’t play anyway so we’re not used to him being in our lineup anyway. Fortunately, we have that experience now.”
THE NEWS
Sergei Bobrovsky will start in net for the Panthers tonight.
Tonight’s game will start at 7:30 p.m. EST and will be broadcasted locally on Scripps Sports and the Panthers Plus app. It will be broadcasted nationally on ESPN 2.
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
Evan Rodrigues — Sam Bennett — Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen — Anton Lundell — Brad Marchand
A.J. Greer — Nico Sturm — Jesper Boqvist
Gustav Forsling — Seth Jones
Niko Mikkola — Dmitry Kulikov
Nate Schmidt — Uvis Balinskis
Sergei Bobrovsky
Vitek Vanecek
Scratched: Jaycob Megna, Mackie Samoskevich, Tomas Nosek, Jonah Gadjovich
Suspended: Aaron Ekblad
TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING PROJECTED LINEUP
Yanni Gourde — Brayden Point — Nikita Kucherov
Cam Atkinson — Anthony Cirelli — Jake Guentzel
Conor Geekie — Nick Paul — Gage Goncalves
Zemgus Girgensons — Luke Glendenning
Victor Hedman — J.J. Moser
Ryan McDonagh — Erik Cernak
Nick Perbix — Emil Lilleberg — Darren Raddysh
Andrei Vasilevskiy
Jonas Johansson
Injured: Oliver Bjorkstrand, Brandon Hagel
(Lines are projected and subject to change)
*Opposing team lines subject to change.