Florida trails the Bruins by four points in the Atlantic Division with five games to go for each team
The Florida Panthers final road game of the regular season should be a doozie.
It’s been a rough few weeks for the Panthers, a team that has spent much of the season considered among the favorites for the Stanley Cup.
Florida had lost eight of their past 10 games before Thursday night’s 6-0 win over the Ottawa Senators, but it wasn’t just the win that had the team feeling good afterwards.
The Panthers won the game by consistently and relentlessly throwing their style of hockey at the Senators, the way Florida had done game in and game out throughout the majority of this season.
Now the question will be whether they can keep that going and get back to performing at a high level on a nightly basis.
A great way to test if that is indeed the case will be to see how Florida does against the Atlantic Division-leading Boston Bruins on Saturday afternoon.
Entering play Saturday, Boston (105 points) holds a four-point edge on the Panthers (101 points). Both teams have played 77 games.
Florida does hold the tiebreaker over the Bruins, with four more regulation wins than the B’s (39-35), but if the Cats are going to need another one of those ROW’s on Saturday if they’re going to have a decent shot at winning the division.
Here are the Panthers projected lines and pairings ahead of Saturday’s battle with Boston:
Vladimir Tarasenko – Sasha Barkov – Sam Reinhart
Nick Cousins – Sam Bennett – Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Evan Rodrigues
Steven Lorentz – Kevin Stenlund – Ryan Lomberg
Gus Forsling – Oliver Ekman-Larsson
Niko Mikkola – Brandon Montour
Josh Mahura – Dmitry Kulikov
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