The second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs begin Monday night in Toronto.
That’s where we find the Florida Panthers, fresh off their five-game victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning in round one.
Now, for the second time in three postseasons, the Cats will open the second round at Scotiabank Arena against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Toronto is fresh off a six-game series win over the Ottawa Senators, and like Florida, should be good and rested heading into the series.
Florida will have had four days between games while the Maple Leafs have had three.
While the Panthers enter the series at full strength in terms of injury, there are a couple of things that are worth being monitored early in the series.
Florida star forward Matthew Tkachuk was very impactful during their opening round win over Tampa despite playing about five minutes less per game than his regular season average.
He still logged three goals and five points in the five games, but it’s still something to keep an eye on.
The Panthers will also be starting their second straight series without top pairing defenseman Aaron Ekblad.
Against Tampa, he was finishing off a 20-game suspension for violating the league’s policy on performance enhancing substances.
This time, he’s serving a two-game ban for a hit to the head of Lightning forward Brandon Hagel.
Here are the Panthers projected lines and pairings for Game 1 in Toronto:
Carter Verhaeghe – Sasha Barkov – Sam Reinhart
Evan Rodrigues – Sam Bennett – Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Brad Marchand
A.J. Greer – Nico Sturm – Jesper Boqvist
Gus Forsling – Seth Jones
Niko Mikkola – Dmitry Kulikov
Uvis Balinskis – Nate Schmidt
Scratches: Mackie Samoskevich, Jonah Gadjovich, Tomas Nosek, Jaycob Megna
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