SUNRISE, Fla. --Aleksander Barkov will play for the Florida Panthers in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Final against the Carolina Hurricanes.
"Ready to roll," Panthers coach Paul Maurice said Wednesday. "Freshest guy on the ice."
The Panthers captain left a 1-0 win in Game 3 on Monday with 7:04 remaining in the first period because of a lower-body injury sustained on a hip check from Carolina forward Jack Drury. Florida leads the best-of-7 series 3-0 with a chance to advance to the Stanley Cup Final with a win in Game 4 at FLA Live Arena on Wednesday (8 p.m. ET; TNT, CBC, SN, TVAS).
After the game, Maurice joked that Barkov wasn't injured, but rather the center had gone to a bar mitzvah. As he put it, "Yeah, that's what we'll go with. Bar mitzvah, and he didn't want to disappoint the kids."
The bar mitzvah, Maurice joked Tuesday, "went late into the night."
"So, good news," Maurice said. "It was as much precautionary as anything. We had to rule out anything sinister, so we're very optimistic that [Barkov] will return soon. And when he does, he'll be ready to go. So we'll wait until tomorrow to see how he's feeling to make sure he continues on that path. But we're optimistic that we would see him in Game 4 or, if necessary, see him in Game 5 (on Friday)."
Maurice said there had been a possibility that Barkov could have returned in Game 3, but the Panthers opted to be safe and keep him out. However, the fact that Florida is up 3-0 in the series will not play into Barkov's availability for Game 4, Maurice said.
"There's always a spectrum of what something could be," Maurice said. "And at the worst end of it, you've got to make sure it's not that. And then once you rule that out, you feel, OK, this is something we understand, we can work with. So, that was ruled out yesterday."
For the Panthers, Game 4 provides a chance to close out the Hurricanes without having to make a return trip to Raleigh, North Carolina, for Game 5. They faced the same situation in the Eastern Conference Second Round, when they went up 3-0 against the Toronto Maple Leafs before losing Game 4 in Toronto. They won that series in five games.
Barkov will be significant in avoiding that scenario.
"He's a huge part of our team," forward Eetu Luostarinen said. "He shows that on the ice. Obviously we want him to be on the ice as much as he can. He can make really good plays."
Maurice believed Barkov was trending in the right direction Tuesday.
"It'll be a science-based decision," he said. "And then there's the game-plan part of it. You can do different things with your group. It puts your structure back in terms of your lines that you've been running. In terms of running the bench, then, there's a lot more knowns for me on our bench, how you employ your players.
"The decision will just be based on his health and how he feels, and we'll have another plan set all day tomorrow if he doesn't go."
Barkov has 12 points (four goals, eight assists) in 15 games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. He had two goals and an assist in the first two games of the Eastern Conference Final, including a goal in the second period of Game 2.
Barkov finished second in scoring on the Panthers during the regular season with 78 points (23 goals, 55 assists) in 68 games. Luostarinen moved up from third-line left wing into the top-line center spot to replace Barkov on Monday.
"The first thing that goes through my head is that we've done this before," Maurice said. "I've got three options on what I'm going to do with the lines when he goes down. … Luostarinen went into the middle, looked OK. Just leave it.
"There's advantages to going through the adversity that we went through this year because it's not that big a change when it happens -- clearly it is; Barkov's out of your lineup -- but you don't make a big deal of it on your bench and you really don't during the year when it's happened, because there's nothing you can do about it and you've got to win these games. So, it wasn't that seismic at the time. We've dealt with it before."
