Florida hosts Toronto with a shot at winning the Atlantic Division

The Florida Panthers are getting healthier just in time for the playoffs.

Several players have been nursing minor injuries and ailments over the past couple weeks.

Aaron Ekblad and Carter Verhaeghe were hurt during Florida’s final regular season road trip, but both have been skating and are expected to be ready for the playoffs.

The same was said about Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Sasha Barkov after they were each held out of practice this week.

Speaking after Florida’s optional morning skate on Tuesday, Panthers Head Coach Paul Maurice said Ekman-Larsson would not play in the finale against Toronto, explaining that, “He could, but there’s no sense in putting him in.”

Instead, Josh Mahura will slot into the lineup for Ekman-Larsson. 

While it sounds like OEL and Ekblad will be good to go for Game 1 of the playoffs, Maurice did have some good news for the task at hand.

“Verhaeghe is good to go so he’s back in the lineup tonight,” Maurice said, quickly adding that Barkov would also be playing.

An area of Florida’s game that will likely get a needed boost with Verhaeghe’s return is the power play.

His may not be the first name (or second, or third) that come to mind when thinking of Florida’s PP1, but it’s Verhaeghe that does a lot of the little things that keeps the unit running like a well-oiled machine.

“When Carter went down our power play kinda went down a little bit,” Maurice said. “He’s the…we were trying to attach a word to him…he’s not the catalyst to it, he’s kind of the fixer to it, because he can get on a puck from a corner, he’s such a good skater that his puck retrieval is great, and then what happens is you’re banging around and everybody thinks we’re trying to get it to (Sam) Reinhart, and then Verhaeghe gets it in an unusual spot and it’s bar-down and it's in.”

Florida still has a shot at winning the Atlantic Division and securing home ice advantage in at least the first two rounds of the playoffs.

After 81 games, the Panthers are one point behind the Boston Bruins for first place. They host the Ottawa Senators on Tuesday.

Florida holds the tiebreaker over Boston – with 41 regulation wins to the Bruins 36 – should both teams finish with the same amount of points.

The division winner will face Tampa Bay in the opening round. The second place finisher hosts Toronto.

“We’ll play to win,” Maurice said. “If there’s something on the line for our team, we’ll dress everybody that’s healthy and ready to go.”

It sounds like Florida’s forward lines will look like this against Toronto:

Vladimir Tarasenko – Sasha Barkov – Sam Reinhart

Carter Verhaeghe – Sam Bennett – Matthew Tkachuk

Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Evan Rodrigues

Jonah Gadjovich – Kevin Stenlund – Nick Cousins 

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