
Florida will be looking turn the best-of-7 conference final into a best-of-3 with a win on Tuesday
The Florida Panthers will be a cool, calm and collected bunch when they arrive at Amerant Bank Arena for Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals on Tuesday night.
Sure, the Panthers find themselves trailing 2-1 in the best-of-7 series against the Presidents’ Trophy-winning New York Rangers, but this is a team that has prided itself on keeping an even keel and staying the course.
Florida did not get outplayed in Game 3, but that doesn’t matter.
They lost.

There will be things for them to improve on, and things for them to make sure they do even better than they did on Sunday.
“The players know what they’re going to face,” Maurice said “We going to handle the day. We’re going to look at the things we need to deal with. It’s for the simple reason to get better and give ourselves a better chance to win a game tomorrow. We want to make sure by the time they want out of this room, the day has been handled.”
That would be the idea.
For the team to be locked in to whatever they need to be focused on a good day ahead of Game 4.
With that being the case, Maurice doesn’t anticipate having to say much to his team ahead of the game on Tuesday.
“I got it all done today,” he said. “As long as they know how you feel, they know how you’re walking in the room. Words won’t be important, it’ll be emotion and mood, but there’s nobody in there not fired up, ready to go.”
When the Panthers finished Game 3, their forward lines looked a bit different than they did when the game began.
Carter Verhaeghe moved up to the top line with Sasha Barkov and Sam Reinhart while Evan Rodrigues skated alongside Sam Bennett and Matthew Tkachuk. Vladimir Tarasenko, meanwhile, moved to a familiar spot with Anton Lundell and Eetu Luostarinen.
Whether or not Maurice decides to make any roster moves remains to be seen, and likely won’t be known at least until Florida takes the ice for its morning skate at the Baptist Health IcePlex in Fort Lauderdale.
“We’ve all been playing with each other through the whole year, so it wasn’t really a big surprise or anything new,” said Lundell. “We’ve been changing the lines a lot through the season and sometimes you want to try something new and see if that will give a spark to the team.”
Here are the Panthers projected lines and pairings ahead of Game 4 against New York:
Vladimir Tarasenko – Sasha Barkov – Sam Reinhart
Carter Verhaeghe – Sam Bennett – Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Evan Rodrigues
Ryan Lomberg – Kevin Stenlund – Nick Cousins
Gus Forsling – Aaron Ekblad
Niko Mikkola – Brandon Montour
Oliver Ekman-Larsson – Dmitry Kulikov
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NZkwGJnAbs[/embed]
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