Florida won the first two games of the series in Sunrise by identical 3-2 final scores
If at first you don’t succeed…
The Florida Panthers will take their second shot at moving on to the second round when they host the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday night at Amerant Bank Arena.
Florida suffered its first loss off the playoffs on Saturday, a 6-3 defeat in Game 4 that saw Tampa stave off elimination in front of a raucous home crowd.
Now it’ll be the Cats’ turn to take the ice in their home barn, and Florida will be ready to correct the mistakes that occurred two nights prior.
“We talk all the time about handling your day,” said Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice. “Today we needed to deal with the video from last night. And then it’s done, and then we move on.”
There are plenty of reasons that Florida should be a confident team heading into Game 5.
Aside from the way they’ve played for much of the series, the Panthers have been a team that has been responded to postseason adversity quite well over the past couple playoffs.
“I’m looking forward to getting that one going and seeing us come out,” Maurice said. “I think we’ll come out with a little bit more energy. I think we were pretty passive in that game.”
Whether Maurice plans to make any lineup changes is something we may learn on gameday, but based off his comments Sunday, it doesn’t sound like Ryan Lomberg will be coming back into the fray just yet.
He’s been sidelined for the past week with an illness and is just starting to get his legs back under him.
“He got knocked down pretty hard for two days, so it’s gonna take him a couple days to get his engine back,” Maurice said.
Here are the Panthers projected lines and pairings for Game 5:
Vladimir Tarasenko – Sasha Barkov – Sam Reinhart
Carter Verhaeghe – Anton Lundell – Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen – Kevin Stenlund – Evan Rodrigues
Kyle Okposo – Steven Lorentz – Nick Cousins
Gus Forsling – Aaron Ekblad
Niko Mikkola – Brandon Montour
Oliver Ekman-Larsson – Dmitry Kulikov
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