Before the Florida Panthers played the Washington Capitals on Monday night, coach Andrew Brunette said the lineup would remain the same.
It just did not look the same.
Brunette mixed things up going into Game 4 — shuffling his top three forward lines and top two defensive pairings.
It all seemed to work.
Florida’s defensive play was one of its best of the season as the Panthers split up Aaron Ekblad and MacKenzie Weegar.
That not only allowing Ben Chiarot to play with Ekblad for the first time, but reunited Weegar with Gus Forsling — a defensive pairing that played so well together when Ekblad has been injured.
Florida held Washington to just 16 shots on goal and 37 shot attempts in its 3-2 overtime win which evened the best-of-7 series at two games each.
”It’s harder to change defensive pairings, especially in a playoff series,” Brunette said. “We thought we would give it a try — to give (Chiarot) a chance to finally play with Eky and get that feeling. I thought that was important and thought they played really well together. It brought part-heaviness and puck moving. … I thought they complimented each other very well.”
— Mason Marchment did not skate Wednesday and it looks like Maxim Mamin gets back in.
Brunette said Marchment is a game-time decision and is dealing with a previous injury.
— Sergei Bobrovsky made a terrific save on Marcus Johansson just before coming to the bench with 3:09 remaining on Monday, an aggressive move by Brunette which paid off.
Sam Reinhart was able to tie the score with 2:04 left as the Panthers had six skaters deep in the Washington zone.
“I was going to do it a little bit earlier. Thank God I didn’t,” Brunette said. “It’s one of those things where you flip a coin. Then there was icing and we got our group out there and I have a lot of trust in them that they’ll make something happen. They made things happen all years and it continued (Monday).”
With a laugh, Brunette admitted sometimes luck plays a hand.
“I don’t know anything,’’ he joked. “You take a chance and it worked out.”
As for Bobrovsky’s performance on Monday night?
”He has been rock solid,” Brunette said. “He has been lasered in and laser focused. You can tell he is on it, has kept us in games by making big saves. He has given us the opportunity to be at 2-2.”
— Washington goalie Ilya Samsonov is now 1-1 with a 1.66 goals-against average and a .949 save percentage in his two-plus games in net.
In those games, Samsonov has a .967 save percentage at 5-on-5, which is the third-highest in the playoffs among goaltenders with at least two games played. Bobrovsky is at .922 in 5-on-5 play.
— Brunette said he thought Sam Bennett was OK after taking a high hit from T.J. Oshie — there was no fine — in the third period. Bennett did need stitches above his eye.
Although the league took no disciplinary action, Brunette “did not like” the hit.
”My opinion doesn’t really matter, but I didn’t like the hit,” he said. “I think it … yeah … I didn’t like it.”
— Carter Verhaeghe became the first Florida player to score in regulation and overtime of a playoff game.
— Florida’s power play was 0-for-4 on Monday and is scoreless in 13 tries this postseason. Florida did get a lot of looks on the power play but still failed to score.
”I think we are a little bit snake-bitten,” Brunette said. “Power plays are funny things. I thought we have had some pretty good looks. If you had told me it was 0-for-13, I haven’t hated it. We have missed some pretty good opportunities, have been a little reluctant to attack more. That would be my complaint on that.
“It takes one. We’re getting looks and we’re getting close. It’s going to be an important factor here but we’re due. I think we get one and the floodgates will open up.”
WWE has announced additional matches for Friday Night SmackDown as two singles matches have been added to the card.
Xavier Woods vs. Butch and Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Sami Zayn were announced this afternoon on WWE’s website.
When Nakamura attempted to call out Roman Reigns for his attack several weeks ago, Zayn came out instead as he was out to prove he can be an asset to The Bloodline. Zayn recently beat Nakamura with a Helluva Kick to earn a count-out victory.
Last week on SmackDown, Butch earned a win over Kofi Kingston. Woods has two wins thus far over Butch.
The show is being built around the winner take all title unification bout between Raw Tag Team Champions RK-Bro and SmackDown Tag Team Champions The Usos, a match that was originally slated to take place at WrestleMania Backlash. WWE may have spoiled the result of the match on social media.
While away from in-ring action, he has been working behind the scenes in AEW and is part of the development team for AEW’s upcoming video game. Despite rumblings that he could be close to making a return, that’s not the case.
The Young Bucks recently teased that when Omega is healthy he would return and face Vikingo. Dave Meltzer reported in the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that “there isn’t even close to a date set for Omega to return.” He added that the third AAA TripleMania event isn’t until October and if Omega is healthy then this was a match he personally asked for.
Vikingo won the vacant AAA Mega Championship after Omega vacated the title at the end of 2021.
Omega previously stated that he hoped to be back in action by February, but admitted at the time that he was a little too optimistic and that turned out to be the case.
This week on “The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy,” Hardy discussed the relationship between Bray Wyatt and Vince McMahon, as well as Bray’s overall creativity.
Matt Hardy explaining the relationship between Bray Wyatt and Vince McMahon:
“Windham (Bray Wyatt) has always had a very strange relationship with Vince, very strange, like, I almost felt like Vince looked at him like a son in some ways,” Hardy said.
“When he would do things that he liked, he would love him and he would really give him everything that he could possibly give him. He would bend over backwards to try and accommodate him. But then when he did something he didn’t like, he hated, like he was going to lock him away for good.”
“It was almost like a really weird, a really strange and different duality that Vince shared with Bray. When he liked him or loved him, he was all about him. But when he disliked him, oh my god, it was really bad and he would like punish him and insult him. To me, it was so strange. It was almost like a parent.”
Matt talking about the creativeness of Bray Wyatt:
“He’s just an out of the box thinker. He’s also a very interesting person. Some of the material that he reads and studies is stuff that is just really out of the blue, things that you wouldn’t expect.”
“He’s a very well versed and educated person and he has a lot of interests. I feel like that makes him overly creative in many ways. His thought process of trying to do things new and differently is very unique and very special just to himself. Not a lot of people think like he does. He’s very unique and it really is a very special talent and gift that he has when it comes to being creative.”
