Florida Panthers ‘ Niko Mikkola has been ejected from Monday’s Game 4 for boarding Tampa Bay Lightning center Zemgus Girgensons.
The incident occurred just 19 seconds into the third period of the game when Girgensons was making a play with the puck, and Mikkola went for the hit to knock him off the puck. While the initial hit was clean and knocked over Girgensons, Mikkola then went for another hit while the Latvian was in the process of getting up close to the boards, and the contact slammed him into the boards.
Mikkola received a five-minute major penalty and a game misconduct for the hit. The Lightning did not score on the five-minute power play that was a result of that play. Girgensons also appeared to be fine, as he had taken several shifts after the hit.
There is currently no word on if Mikkola will receive any supplementary discipline for the hit.
With Mikkola out of the game, his regular partner on the top pair, Seth Jones, has seen a bit of a rotation of ice time with Nate Schmidt, Dmitry Kulikov and Gustav Forsling.
Mikkola has, to this point, been held off the scoresheet in the playoffs, with no points in four games. He is coming off of the best regular season of his career, with 6 goals and 16 assists for 22 points in 76 games, with all three marks beating his previous career-highs, most of them set in the prior 2023-24 season with the Panthers.
Despite being down 2-1 at the time of Mikkola’s ejection and down a defenseman, the Panthers managed to come back in the third period to win the game 4-2 and take a 3-1 lead in the series. They’ll look to finish off the Lightning in Tampa for Game 5 on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. EST.
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