TAMPA – They always say the last game is the hardest to win.
Their first chance to advance to Round 2 of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Florida Panthers will battle the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference First Round at Amalie Arena on Wednesday.
Leading the series 3-1, the defending champs certainly aren’t new to this situation.
“You’re going to get more desperation from the opposing team than you probably have,” said forward Matthew Tkachuk, who’s tied for first on the Panthers with three goals in the hard-fought series. “We’re a desperate team as well. We want to finish this and finish it the right way. With that being said, what we’ve always had in our head going through it the past few years is our style is a seven-game series style. No matter what happens out there – the score, the time of the game – we’re playing every game like it’s a seven-game mindset.”
Pulling off a stunning comeback, the Panthers are riding high after a wild Game 4.
Trailing 2-1 late in the third period, Aaron Ekblad and Seth Jones each lit the lamp within a span of 11 seconds to put the Panthers up 3-2 in an eventual 4-2 win on Monday in Sunrise.
Per NHL stats, it was the fastest back-to-back goals scored by D-men in playoff history.
Earlier in the game, the Lightning took the lead on their own back-to-back goals in just 11 seconds.
“Last game was pretty crazy,” Tkachuk said. “There were swings on both sides. They had theirs in the second [period], and we had ours in the third. The margins are small. There’s not a lot of chances out there right now. There’s been a lot of good defense played at both sides.”
Keeping the door open for their eventual comeback, the Panthers stood tall with an impressive five-minute penalty kill earlier in the third period in which they allowed just one shot on goal.
After surrendering a power-play goal in Game 1, they’ve gone 14-for-14 on the kill since.
“It started with the kill,” head coach Paul Maurice said of the team’s come-from-behind win in Game 4. “That was such an important piece to the game, but keeping that belief, you come out of it, and you think something good is going to happen.”
Penalized after the fact for a hit on Lightning forward Brandon Hagel in the second period of Game 4, Ekblad, who had no prior such incidents during his 11 seasons in the NHL, received a two-game suspension from the NHL’s Department of Player Safety on Tuesday.
Hagel, who was suspended for Game 3 for a hit on Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov in Game 2, won’t be able to play in Game 5, according to Lightning head coach Jon Cooper.
In Ekblad’s absence, Uvis Balinskis will enter the lineup for the Panthers.
After recording a career-high 18 points (four goals, 14 assists) in 76 games during the regular season, Balinskis suited up in Games 1 and 2 of this series against the Lightning.
In those two games, the 28-year-old recorded a +2 plus/minus rating.
“It’s exciting,” Balinskis said. “It’s playoff hockey, and it’s good to be back. … I’m trying to play simple. The game is fast and physical. Just keep simple and everything will work out.”
Across the ice, Tampa Bay is looking to get back into the series.
Outside of their 5-1 win in Game 3, the Lightning have been outscored 12-4 during their three losses, including losing Games 1 and 2 at Amalie Arena by a combined score of 8-2.
Getting depth scoring, Mitchell Chaffee and Erik Cernak scored both their goals in Game 4.
Jake Guentzel, who is in his first playoff run as a member of the Lightning, leads the team in scoring with five points (two goals, three assists) in the series. Yet to find the twine, Nikita Kucherov, this season’s Art Ross Trophy winner, sits second in scoring with four assists.
Brayden Point, who netted a team-high 42 goals in the regular season, has two goals thus far.
Between the pipes, Sergei Bobrovsky currently has the edge over fellow future Hall of Famer Andrei Vasilevskiy. Through four games, Bobrovsky boasts a .902 save percentage for the Panthers, while Vasilevskiy is sitting on a .884 save percentage for the Lightning.
Even though this is a potential elimination game, the Panthers aren’t treating it as such.
“Our mindset doesn’t change,” Verhaeghe said. “It’s the same as the last couple games. We’re playing a seven-game series, and that’s our mindset. We’re going in just trying to win a game. That’s it.”
THEY SAID IT
“He’s been unbelievable for us. We knew he was a great defenseman before he came here but seeing it from this close every single day in practice and in the games, what he is doing and how much he is helping us is amazing.” – Aleksander Barkov on Seth Jones
“What I think we’ve learned over the last couple years is there’s a slightly different emotion coming into an elimination game for both teams. You want to avoid that emotion. I’m not talking about energy level. I’m not talking about playing as hard as you can. You have a tendency to protect it, or every time you touch you the puck you want to have that even happen so bad that you try to make it happen with that touch.” – Paul Maurice on the nature of elimination games
“They’re going to come out really fast and fired [up]. They’re going to want to win the game. I think the first five minutes of the game is going to be the most important, and then we’ll go from there.” – Uvis Balinskis on what he expects from the Lightning
FIVE CATS STATS
- Fourteen different Panthers have recorded at least one point in the series.
- The Panthers have not surrendered a power-play goal since Game 1.
- Matthew Tkachuk has tallied a team-high three power-play points in the series.
- Niko Mikkola has racked up a team-high 20 hits in the series.
- Aleksander Barkov is winning 63.1% of his faceoffs in the series.
PROJECTED LINEUP (SUBJECT TO CHANGE)
Forwards
Carter Verhaeghe – Aleksander Barkov – Sam Reinhart
Evan Rodrigues – Sam Bennett – Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Brad Marchand
A.J. Greer – Nico Sturm – Jesper Boqvist
Defensemen
Gustav Forsling – Seth Jones
Niko Mikkola – Dmitry Kulikov
Uvis Balinskis – Nate Schmidt
Goaltenders
Sergei Bobrovsky
Vitek Vanecek
RECENT TRANSACTIONS:
- April 25: F Jesse Puljujarvi assigned to Charlotte (AHL)
HOW TO WATCH/LISTEN
When: Wednesday, April 30 at 7:30 p.m. ET
Where: Amalie Arena – Tampa, FL
TV & Streaming: Panthers+, WSFL-TV, WHDT, WFTX, ESPN2
Radio: 560 WQAM (Dade/Broward); 1230 WBZT-AM / 92.1 WZZR-FM (Palm Beach); 100.3 WCTH (Florida Keys); Panthers App; SiriusXM App & Streaming 931
Watch Party: Baptist Health IcePlex
