Ekblad will return, hail suspended when Panthers try to take a strangle with Tampa Bay on series with Tampa Bay

The Florida Panthers have been organizing their first playoff game on Saturday since game 7 of the Stanley Cup final of the last year.

Florida opened her Matchup at the beginning of this week in the first round against Tampa Bay Lightning with two impressive victories.

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Now the cats have returned to Südflorida and will try to take the lead 3-0 in the series if they do the Lightning in game 3 at the Amerant Bank Arena.

Just what the Panthers squad will look like is still a mystery.

The captain of Florida, Sasha Barkov, was injured in the third phase of the 2-0 victory on Thursday after an illegal check by Tampa striker Brandon Hagel.

Officials gave hail a five-minute major for interference during the game, and since then he has received a one-game lock from the NHL department for player safety.

Barkov said, head coach Panthers, Paul Maurice, said on Friday that he had not been clarified, but he was also not excluded.

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A change we know is the recording of the defender Aaron Ekblad in the back line.

Ekblad has completed a 20-game suspension, which he handed over at the beginning of March or violated the conditions of the NHL/NHLPA program to improve performance.

He has been back with the Panthers Skating and Exercise in the past few weeks and it will be interesting to see how quickly he can use the intensity and speed of not only the NHL, but also the Stanley Cup playoffs.

“It is a very unusual situation, usually a player who plays 20 games has a significant injury and that really affects her rehab,” said Maurice. “We will bring him back with his partner and bring him back to all situations. It is about getting it up to date as soon as possible. There will be about a 10-minute adaptation to playoff hockey because it is only different. He will adapt and go away.”

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Here are the Panthers -projection lines and pairings for game 3 against Tampa:

Carter Verhaeghe – Sasha Barkov – Sam Reinhart

Mackie Samoskevich – Sam Bennett – Matthew Tkachuk

Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Brad Marchand

Evan Rodrigues – Nico Sturm – Jesper Boqvist

Gus Forsling – Aaron Ekblad

Niko Mikkola – Seth Jones

Dmitry Kulikov – Nate Schmidt

Kratzer: AJ Greer, Jonah Gadjovich, Tomas Nosek, Jaycob Megna, Uvis Balinskis

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