Reinhart for Panthers in game 3 of East Final with a lower assault

Fort Lauderdale, Fla. – Sam Reinhart will not play on Saturday (8:00 p.m., Max, Trutv, TNT, SN, TVAS, CBC) due to a violation of the lower assault for the Florida Panther in game 3 of the Eastern Conference against the Carolina Hurricanes at the Amerant Bank Arena.

Panther's coach Paul Maurice said that the striker was daily and was replaced by Jesper Boqvist. Florida will try to take over a 3-0 lead in the best-of-7 series without Reinhart after winning the first two games in Carolina.

“It is a player who touches all parts of their game, a critical part of our power game (Aleksander) Barkov and Reinhart are elite at penalty murder, and he pulls the heavy fire and pulls the best sentence (defender) from the other team,” said Maurice. “So it is an important player from our line -up, and we went through other important (players miss games).

“Barkov and (Sam) Bennett and (Aaron) Ekblad missed all important times in the playoffs, so you have to be able to survive.”

Reinhart was injured in the first period of Florida's 5-0 victory in game 2 on Thursday. The 29-year-old seemed to prefer his left leg or hip after being thrown onto the ice from an open hip check from the Hurricanes Center Sebastian Aho while he was carrying the puck to the offensive zone at 2:49 p.m.

He returned to play a 12-second shift later in the first before missing the rest of the game.

Reinhart has 11 points (four goals, seven templates) in 14 Stanley Cup Playoff games. He led the Panthers with 39 goals and 81 points and finished second in the team with 42 templates in 79 games of the regular season.

Last season he had 16 points (10 goals, six templates) in 24 playoff games to win the Stanley Cup after setting the NHL career height with 57 goals and 94 points in 82 games in the regular season.

However, Maurice believes that the panthers can do without pure hardness.

“You cannot let a man go down and have no chance, or you don't have the depths you think,” said Maurice. “Apart from that, there is a 57-goal scorer from our line-up. Nobody has this type of depth.”

Boqvist, a healthy scratch in the last three games, has two points (one goal, an assist) in nine playoff games after 23 points (12 goals, 11 assists) of the regular season were scored. The 26-year-old will get on the top line with Evan Rodrigues and Barkov in Reinhart's place on the right wing.

He played with Barkov and Reinhart when Rodrigues missed the games 5 and 6 of the second round against the Toronto Maple Leafs with an unknown injury and had a goal and a template in a 6-1 win in game 5.

“Obviously I didn't play in a couple here, so I will try to get my legs in motion as soon as possible and to keep it all,” said Boqvist. “I will only try to build on this couple of games. So it should be fun.”

Maurice believes that Boqvist's earlier experience with Barkov should help him fit into the top line.

“The violation of Rodrigues then turns out to be an advantage at some point because he came in and played with Barkov,” said Maurice. “So, he slips with a central with which he will play, and he has already played with this guy. So there is not much time or worry. You don't have to spend half an hour of your day together to decide what you do in different situations.

Boqvist said he was looking forward to the opportunity to play with Barkov again. Barkov has 12 points in 14 games in this post -season (four goals, eight templates) and an average of 19:25 ICE TIME.

“Probably one of the best players in the world, so of course it's so easy,” he said. “It's also a lot of fun. It is probably the most important thing to have fun.”