The Florida Panthers just completed a pretty successful business trip.
Florida picked up their third straight win, taking down the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 5 of their second-round series by a final score of 6-1.
Now the Panthers head back to South Florida with a 3-2 series lead and a chance to eliminate Toronto on Friday night in Sunrise.
There were no shots on goal and only one whistle in the game’s first five minutes as the teams appeared to be trying to feel one another out.
Both goaltenders would be called upon to make big saves in the shifts that followed, though.
First it was Sergei Bobrovsky stopping William Nylander on a breakaway that Gus Forsling may have helped with on the backcheck, then Joseph Woll made a snappy glove save on Sam Reinhart about a minute later.
Florida picked up the first goal of the game on a great shift by their top line.
After Woll made a couple strong saves on Jesper Boqvist and Sam Reinhart, the puck found its way to the stick of Aaron Ekblad.
He fired a shot over Woll’s blocker and into the top corner of the net, giving the Panthers a 1-0 lead with just over five minutes left in the period.
It was six minutes into the middle frame that Florida doubled their lead.
After killing off a Maple Leafs power play, the Panthers slowly began to take control of the pace again.
A point shot from Dmitry Kulikov hit Leafs’ forward Scott Laughton as it bounded past Woll at the 6:08 mark of the second period.
Less than four minutes later, Jesper Boqvist finished off a perfect cross-ice pass from Sam Reinhart to expand Florida’s lead to three.
Another Panthers defenseman picked up his first goal of the playoffs about four minutes after that, as this time it was Niko Mikkola blasting a shot under Woll’s glove.
With just under six minutes left in the second period, Florida was suddenly up by four.
Joining the mix of players picking up their first goal of the playoffs was A.J. Greer.
He found a loose puck at the top of the goal crease and slammed it past a sprawling Woll, pushing Florida’s lead to 5-0 and sending Woll to the showers early.
He was replaced by veteran goaltender Matt Murray for the remainder of the night.
A Sam Bennett power play goal with 10:50 to go gave Florida a 6-0 lead, leading to an even louder chorus of boos than we heard after the Greer goal.
Nick Robertson runed Bobrovsky’s shutout with just over a minute to go, not that it’s going to bother Bob at all.
The Cats clearly have all the momentum on their side, and now head home with a chance to advance to their third straight conference final if they can pick up a victory on Friday.
On to Game 6.
QUICK THOUGHTS
Bobrovsky’s shutout streak lasted 1:47:58, stretching from the end of Game 3 to the end of Game 5.
Ekblad is riding a five-game point streak, with two goals and four assists during the run.
Reinhart’s pair of assists gave him ten points in 10 playoff games.
Filling in for an injured Evan Rodrigues, Jesper Boqvist picked up his first point of the postseason on Ekblad’s goal. Then he scored his first goal of the playoffs about an hour later.
Kulikov has two points over his past three games.
Matthew Takchuk has assists in three straight games after dishing out a helper on Kulikov’s goal.
Picking up an assist on Greer’s goal, Nate Schmidt has three points over his past five games.
Bennett has four goals and five points over his past six outings.
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