The game between the Florida Panthers and Boston Bruins will take place at FLA Live Arena on Friday, April 21 at 7:30 PM ET.
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The Florida Panthers will welcome the Boston Bruins to FLA Live Arena for an NHL game on Friday. The Florida Panthers won 3-6 in their last game over the Bruins. The Panthers managed a split in Boston, and they did it with a performance few teams have mustered on the Bruins’ home ice this season. Florida scored four straight third-period goals — two of them by Brandon Montour — and beat the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Bruins 6-3 on Wednesday night to send Boston to its first loss in 10 games and tie the first-round playoff series.
“In a perfect world, it would have been great to steal two,, but after Game 1 this was all that was on our mind,” said Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk, who had two assists. “We’re going back to Florida even. We’ll take the split and run.” The league’s top regular-season team last year, Florida didn’t qualify for the playoffs until the final days of this season. Their reward: a first-round matchup with the team that set records for the most wins and points in NHL history.
After losing 3-1 in the opener, the Panthers twice took a lead but found themselves tied 2-2 heading into the third period. Montour scored 22 seconds in and later added an insurance goal as Florida opened a 6-2 lead before Taylor Hall cut the deficit to three in the final minute.
The Boston Bruins on the other hand lost 3-6 against the Panthers in their last game. Boston had only lost one other game by more than one goal at home all year. They also won their last eight regular-season games and 15 of their last 16. “The No. 1 lesson you learn is how hard it is to win in the playoffs,” Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said. “For a team that’s been really good in the third period for a long time, it’s an opportunity for us to learn from that.”
Games 3 and 4 are in Sunrise, Florida, on Friday and Sunday. The victory flips the home-ice advantage to the Panthers, and assures the series of a Game 5 back in Boston on Wednesday. “You can’t get too far behind anybody. Certainly not a team like the Boston Bruins, the season they’ve had,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “We’d be more than happy to play seven of them, grind it out. Play as long as we can for as hard as we can.”
Montour’s first goal broke a 2-2 tie, Carter Verhaeghe added an insurance goal, then Montour scored again for Florida and Eetu Luostarinen added an empty netter with 2:25 to play to make it 6-2. Alex Lyon stopped 34 shots, and Sam Bennett and Eric Staal also scored for the Panthers, who seemed overmatched by the NHL-best Bruins in a 3-1 series-opening loss. Brad Marchand scored a short-handed goal, and Tyler Bertuzzi also scored for the Bruins, who set NHL records with 65 wins and 135 points. Linus Ullmark made 24 saves.
Nick Cousins – Brandon Montour – Matthew Tkachuk
Aleksander Barkov – Sam Bennett – Gustav Forsling
Eetu Luostarinen – Sam Reinhart – Eric Staal
Carter Verhaeghe – Colin White
Anthony Duclair – Aaron Ekblad
Radko Gudas – Ryan Lomberg
Anton Lundell – Alex Lyon
Josh Mahura
Marc Staal
Tyler Bertuzzi – Nick Foligno – Derek Forbort
Taylor Hall – Brad Marchand – Tomáš Nosek
Dmitry Orlov – Pavel Zacha – Brandon Carlo
Connor Clifton – Charlie Coyle
Jake DeBrusk – Trent Frederic
Garnet Hathaway – David Krejčí
Hampus Lindholm – Charlie McAvoy
David Pastrňák
Linus Ullmark
Florida Panthers: Spencer Knight, Patric Hornqvist
Boston Bruins: Patrice Bergeron
The game between the Florida Panthers and Boston Bruins will take place at FLA Live Arena on Friday, April 21 at 7:30 PM ET.
The match between the Florida Panthers and Boston Bruins will be telecast live on Fox Sports Florida, Bally Sports Florida, TNT, NESN.
| Country | Channel | Date and Time |
| United States | Fox Sports Florida, Bally Sports Florida, TNT, NESN. | April 21 (7:30 PM ET) |
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