GameDay No. 79: Lines, Betting Odds for Senators at Panthers

SUNRISE — The Florida Panthers and Ottawa Senators meet up on Tuesday night with vastly different but equally important postseason implications.

The Panthers find themselves in control of their own destiny after soaring off to a four-game losing streak while the Senators would be mathematically eliminated from postseason contention with a regulation loss.

”Anytime you can knock a team out, it can be pretty motivating,” Colin White said of the prospect of eliminating the team that drafted him in 2015 and bought him out last July.

“Especially when it is a team that is chasing behind you, so it would be fun to win this game tonight for sure.”

If Florida manages to win this one, it could be a role reversal of sorts of their trip to Ottawa last week.

Their season seemed all but over after they lost their last meeting with the Senators on March 27 to extend their losing streak to four games but they have turned their ship around behind the efforts of Alex Lyon.

He has stepped up in the absence of Sergei Bobrovsky, who has been missing from the Florida lineup with an illness since their 5-2 loss in Ottawa, to the tune of a 4-0-0 record with a .959/1.25 slash-line and a shutout.

With Bobrovsky still recovering from his illness, the Panthers will need another good game out of him and they feel confident in his ability to do so.

And he has been playing well enough to make it a hard decision on who to start when Bobrovsky is ready to return.

“I’ve made the decision not to think about it because it is a useless exercise because the decision isn’t made in the environment that I’m in right now,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said.

”We will wait for when Bob is healthy and we will see where Alex is and we will make the call when we get there but i will not disrespect the play that Alex Lyon is showing us. He is playing really well.”

Florida will also be without Sam Bennett for the ninth straight game with a groin injury he has been dealing with since mid-February.

The Panthers have been careful with it since he re-aggravated it after returning when it was not fully healed in March and it is unlikely he returns before Monday’s game against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

He has been skating on his own but has yet to return to the main group for a full practice.

”You probably won’t see him in a group practice but that’s the thing with the schedule, we are at the part of the season where the next full practice will be before the Carolina game,” Maurice said.

”We will skate him tomorrow but he is not playing today and I don’t see him playing [on Saturday] against Washington but we will see when we get to Toronto. It’s a soft-tissue injury. It’s not healed until it heals and he can’t play until it does.”

PANTHERS ON DECK

OTTAWA SENATORS AT FLORIDA PANTHERS

• When: Thursday, 7 p.m.
• Where: FLA Live Arena, Sunrise
• TV/Streaming: Bally Sports Florida, ESPN+
• Radio: WPOW 96.5-FM2; WBZT 1230-AM (Palm Beach); WCTH 100.3-FM (Florida Keys); SiriusXM
• Panthers Radio Streaming: SiriusXM 932
• DraftKings odds — Panthers favored: Money Line (-240); Puck line (-1.5, +100); Over/Under 7 (+105/-125)
• Season Series (Tied 1-1): Panthers 5, Senators 3 (Oct. 29); Senators 5, Panthers 2 (Mar. 27)
• Last season: Florida won 3-1
  
• All-time regular season series: Ottawa leads 57-43-5, 3 ties
• Up Next for the Panthers: Florida at Washington, Saturday, 7 p.m.

PROJECTED FLORIDA PANTHERS LINEUP

23 Carter Verhaeghe // 16 Sasha Barkov // 10 Anthony Duclair

27 Eetu Luostarinen // 15 Anton Lundell // 19 Matthew Tkachuk

94 Ryan Lomberg // 12 Eric Staal // 13 Sam Reinhart

21 Nick Cousins // 6 Colin White // 54 Givani Smith

42 Gus Forsling // 5 Aaron Ekblad

18 Marc Staal // 62 Brandon Montour

28 Josh Mahura // 7 Radko Gudas

34 Alex Lyon

29 Mack Guzda

Scratched: Casey Fitzgerald

Injured: Patric Hornqvist (LTIR-concussion), Sam Bennett (groin), Sergei Bobrovsky (illness)

PROJECTED OTTAWA SENATORS LINEUP

7 Brady Tkachuk // 18 Tim Stutzle // 19 Drake Batherson

12 Alex DeBrincat // 17 Ridly Greig // 28 Claude Giroux

21 Mathieu Joseph // 57 Shane Pinto // 75 Egor Sokolov

36 Patrick Brown // 47 Mark Kastelic // 16 Austin Watson

85 Jake Sanderson // 2 Artem Zub

26 Erik Brannstrom // 5 Nick Holden

Tyler Kleven // Jacob Bernard-Docker

35 Leevi Merilainen

33 Cam Talbot