SUNRISE, Fla. -- The last time the Florida Panthers took the ice for a postseason game at Amerant Bank Arena, it ended with them winning their first Stanley Cup championship. It was Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final last season, with the Edmonton Oilers having forced the Panthers to the brink of squandering a 3-0 series lead. They wouldn’t lose Game 7.
It wasn’t something that had occurred to Evan Rodrigues until he was sitting at a podium on Friday, his Panthers having gone up 2-0 in this series by winning the first two games in Tampa in the Eastern Conference First Round.
“It’s giving me a little bit of chills thinking about that,” Rodrigues said. “It’ll be an awesome atmosphere, cool experience, and now I’m really looking forward to it.”
The Panthers are the defending Stanley Cup champions. And, so far in this series, they’re playing like it, something they will try to continue in Game 3 at Amerant Bank Arena on Saturday (1 p.m. ET; FDSNSUN, SCRIPPS, MAX, truTV, TBS, SN, TVAS).
But now, as the series shifts back to Sunrise after a game in which the intensity and rivalry ramped up tremendously, the Lightning are looking to get back on track after two uncharacteristic games for a team that many had started to believe could contend for the Cup.
Making that more difficult will be the absence of Brandon Hagel, who scored a career-high 35 goals this season. Hagel was assessed a major penalty for interference at 9:51 of the third period of Game 2 after a hit that sent Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov crashing into the boards. Barkov did not return to the game after the hit but will be in the lineup Saturday.
Hagel had a hearing with the Department of Player Safety on Friday, after which he was suspended for Game 3.
Tampa Bay already was struggling to score, with two goals in the first two games of the series. There have been plenty of opportunities in front of Florida goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, including eight power plays in two games, but the Lightning have not been able to cash in enough.
When asked how the team would fix its scoring woes, Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said, “We'll find a way. We'll find a way.”
Teams that go up 3-0 in a Stanley Cup Playoff series are 207-4 (.981) all time.
Here is a breakdown of Game 3:
Lightning: Tampa Bay's lack of scoring has been highlighted by the lack of scoring of forward Nikita Kucherov. The two-time defending Art Ross Trophy winner has not scored a goal in the playoffs since April 18, 2023, going 12 games without a goal (though he has 11 assists in that span, including one in Game 1). It’s especially notable given that the Lightning were the best offensive team in the NHL in the regular season, averaging 3.56 goals per game.
Panthers: Florida will see the return of defenseman and alternate captain Aaron Ekblad, who was suspended without pay for 20 games on March 10 for violating the terms of the NHL/NHLPA Performance Enhancing Substances Program. Ekblad missed the final 18 games of the regular season and the first two games of the playoffs. He will slot back in his usual spot on the top pair alongside Gustav Forsling. The Panthers’ penalty kill is playing exceptionally well so far in the series, allowing one goal on eight chances to the Lightning, that coming from forward Jake Guentzel in the first period of Game 1.
Number to know: Two. That's the number of defensemen in the NHL’s modern era, since 1943-44, who have scored a game-winning goal in each of his team’s first two games in a playoff year. The first was Nicklas Lidstrom in Games 1 and 2 of the 2007 Conference Quarterfinals. The other is Nate Schmidt, who has three goals so far this postseason.
What to look for: Can the Lightning fix their scoring issues and figure out how to beat Bobrovsky? How do the Panthers adjust if Barkov is out of the lineup?