Five-goal flurry in third gives Panthers 3-0 lead in East - ESPN

SUNRISE, Fla. — Niko Mikkola and Aleksander Barkov each scored twice, and the Florida Panthers scored five goals in a nine-minute span of the third period to defeat the Carolina Hurricanes 6-2 on Saturday night and move one win from a third consecutive trip to the Stanley Cup Final.

Jesper Boqvist, a reserve who plays sparingly on the club's fourth line, received the call to suit up Saturday night and play for the injured Sam Reinhart. Boqvist scored the go-ahead goal early in the third for Florida, which now leads the Eastern Conference finals 3-0. Brad Marchand also scored for the Panthers and Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 23 shots.

Logan Stankoven and Seth Jarvis scored for Carolina, which has now dropped 15 consecutive East finals games — getting swept by Pittsburgh in 2009, Boston in 2019, Florida in 2023 and are now on the brink of it happening again. Game 4 is Monday in Sunrise.

Florida's five third-period goals were a club record for any playoff period and ruined what had seemed like a good move by Carolina to switch goaltenders going into Game 3. The Hurricanes went with Pyotr Kochetkov in net, after Frederik Andersen gave up nine goals on just 36 shots in the first five periods of the series. Kochetkov stopped 14 of 15 shots through two periods. The third, not so much.

Florida got a break to make it 1-0. Barkov threw a pass across the goal crease, the puck hitting the stick of Evan Rodrigues before finding Mikkola — who tried to feed it back across for Barkov.

It never got there. Mikkola's pass deflected off Carolina defenseman Dmitry Orlov and past Kochetkov, opening the scoring and giving Florida an 11-2 cumulative score lead in the series to that point.

Stankoven — who was flat-out robbed by Bobrovsky earlier in