The Florida Panthers have shaken up their entire fourth line for a critical Game 3 of their Stanley Cup playoffs second-round series against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Friday.
None of Mackie Samoskevich, Nico Sturm nor Jesper Boqvist were on the ice for warmups for the Panthers, who are down 2-0 in the best-of-7 series. The trio of A.J. Greer, Tomas Nosek and Jonah Gadjovich took their place.
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Greer has played in three games so far in the playoffs, the final two against the Tampa Bay Lightning in Round 1 and Game 1 against the Maple Leafs on Monday. Fridya will be the first game of this postseason for Nosek and Gadjovich.
The trio served as Florida’s fourth line for a majority of the season prior to the trade deadline, when the Panthers added Brad Marchand and Sturm to bolster their depth. During the regular season, they were on the ice together for 193:40 at five-on-five and controlled 60.22 percent of shot attempts. While they were outscored 5-3 overall, they led the opposition in shots on goal (88-66), expected goals (10.45-5.74), scoring chances (97-63) and high-danger chances (48-29).
One other lineup notable: Evan Rodrigues is up on the top line with Aleksander Barkov and Sam Reinhart, while Carter Verhaeghe moves to the second line with Sam Bennett and Matthew Tkachuk.
Florida’s projected lineup for Friday is as follows…
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Forward lines
Evan Rodrigues – Aleksander Barkov – Sam Reinhart
Carter Verhaeghe – Sam Bennett – Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Brad Marchand
A.J. Greer – Tomas Nosek – Jonah Gadjovich
Defense pairs
Gustav Forsling – Aaron Ekblad
Niko Mikkola – Seth Jones
Nate Schmidt – Dmitry Kulikov
Goaltenders
Sergei Bobrovsky
Vitek Vanecek