It’s amazing how much can change in a week during the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
When the Florida Panthers initially left Toronto for South Florida following the first two games of the series, they knew their margin for error against the Maple Leafs was extremely small.
Florida fell behind 0-2 to the Atlantic Division Champion Leafs, a postseason deficit that the Cats had never, in their history, recovered from.
This time around, the Panthers have already erased the deficit and come back to take a 3-2 series lead, something they had yet to accomplish in six previous opportunities.
Now they’ll look to finish the job and knock out Toronto on Friday when they host Game 6 at Amerant Bank Arena.
A victory would mean that Florida advances to the Eastern Conference Final for a third consecutive season.
Considering the Panthers have reeled off three straight wins, it’s not likely that Florida Head Coach Paul Maurice makes any lineup changes.
Ahead of Game 5 on Wednesday, Maurice inserted Jesper Boqvist into the lineup to replace an injured Evan Rodrigues.
While Rodrigues did skate on Wednesday morning and is considered day-to-day, Maurice may stick with the status quo for at least one more game.
This would allow Rodrigues a little extra time to heal and also reward Boqvist, who played an excellent Game 5 while skating on Florida’s top line with Sasha Barkov and Sam Reinhart.
It’s a difficult, but welcomed, situation for Maurice to be in. He’s got several players who are healthy scratches every game that are absolutely worthy of a roster spot, but Florida’s depth has become such a strength that Maurice basically has to keep a perfectly capable forward line riding the pine.
Here are the Panthers projected lines and pairings for Game 6 against the Maple Leafs:
Jesper Boqvist – Sasha Barkov – Sam Reinhart
Carter Verhaeghe – Sam Bennett – Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Brad Marchand
A.J. Greer – Tomas Nosek – Jonah Gadjovich
Gus Forsling – Aaron Ekblad
Niko Mikkola – Seth Jones
Nate Schmidt – Dmitry Kulikov
Scratches: Mackie Samoskevich, Uvis Balinskis, Nico Sturm, Evan Rodrigues, Jaycob Megna
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