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The Florida Panthers are about to enter the home stretch of their regular season.

Coming off a nice four-day break between home games, Florida is looking to hit the ground running as they host the first of their final 11 games against the Utah Hockey Club Friday night at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise.

Entering play Friday, the Panthers are tied atop the Atlantic Division with the Toronto Maple Leafs and Tampa Bay Lightning but lose out to their neighbors from north of the border on a tiebreaker.

Both the Cats and Leafs hold identical 43-25-3 records, but due to Toronto having more non-shootout wins (42 to 38), the tiebreaker goes to them. Tampa has the same amount of points, but one more game played than Florida and Toronto. 

But with 11 games remaining for each team, things are surely going to change over the next few weeks.

Florida’s last game was five days ago, a 4-3 shootout victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins. It was the Panthers sixth straight win on home ice.

As for Utah, the former Coyotes arrive in South Florida with their playoff chances on life support.

With only 10 games remaining, Utah is currently 10 points behind St. Louis for the final Wild Card spot in the Western Conference.

It’s been a strong second half the season for Utah, though.

Over their past 20 games, Utah has points in all but seven of them (11-7-2). That includes their game on Thursday’s night, an 8-0 drubbing at the hands of the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Now they’ll make the short trip from Tampa to Sunrise and wrap up a back-to-back set against a rested and hungry Panthers squad.

If all goes well, Florida will get a boost to their lineup in the form of Brad Marchand.

The future Hall of Famers acquired by the Panthers at the Trade Deadline has been working his way back from an injury he suffered about a week before the deal was made.

Marchand has been skating with Florida for the past several weeks and has been nearing a return.

If he plays, he’ll line up on the Cats’ second line with his old buddy Sam Bennett and rookie Mackie Samoskevich.

Here are the Panthers projected lines and pairings for Sunday’s showdown with the Pens:

Carter Verhaeghe – Sasha Barkov – Sam Reinhart

Mackie Samoskevich – Sam Bennett – Brad Marchand

Eetu Luostarinen – Anton Lundell – Evan Rodrigues

A.J. Greer – Nico Sturm – Jesper Boqvist

Gus Forsling – Seth Jones

Niko Mikkola – Tobias Bjornfot

Nate Schmidt – Uvis Balinskis

Scratches: Tomas Nosek, Jonah Gadjovich, Dmitry Kulikov

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- For much of the game Thursday, it looked like the end of the winning run for the St. Louis Blues.

They fooled us again.

And by extending their winning streak to eight games with an incredible come-from-behind 3-2 win against the Nashville Predators at Bridgestone Arena, the Blues (39-28-7) found a new way to win.

And they found that they really can win in any fashion.

Their goal differential was plus-24 in the first seven games of this winning streak, but this was different. The Blues fought off a slow start and overcame a two-goal deficit by scoring twice in the third period in 19 seconds on goals by Cam Fowler and Dylan Holloway, who scored twice to extend his point streak to nine games (four goals, 10 assists) and after giving up two goals on his first five shots, Joel Hofer settled in to make 16 saves and win his fifth straight start.

Through it all, the Blues remained two points behind the Minnesota Wild for the first wild card in the Western Conference but moved five points ahead of the Vancouver Canucks for the second wild card and remained six ahead of the Calgary Flames, who lost 5-2 against the Dallas Stars on Thursday.

“To have a comeback win, it wasn’t our best game by any means,” Holloway said. “We were kind of fighting it a bit early, but I think that to come back and win a game like that is huge for our team. That’s how we grow. It’s definitely crucial to know that we can do that.”

Coach Jim Montgomery said, “I think we just stuck with it. I thought it was important. Our first period was just OK and Nashville was checking really well. They were playing faster than us. The second period, we needed to win the period and we found a way to get a goal and then in the third period, we just felt that we hung around and we were going to prevail. It wasn’t a constant pressure, but we’re just a confident team that we think we’re going to find a way to win and we did tonight.”

It’s the Blues’ longest winning streak since they won nine in a row from April 2-17, 2022 but first time they were held under four goals. But all things considered, they’ll gladly take the two points.

Let’s dive into Thursday’s Three Takeaways:

* Finally found a forecheck, set play – The Blues trailed 2-1 in the third period, and it appeared that their winning streak would end.

There just didn’t seem to be that push that would be necessary to try and at least even the game up.

Through the first half of the third, they iced the puck six times and there just didn’t appear to be that desperate drive needed. They hadn’t been in this position in a while having to chase a game.

But for as well as the Predators (27-37-8), who were officially eliminated from the playoffs Thursday, checked and kept the Blues from getting to their forecheck, there was a crack.

It came on Fowler’s goal when the Blues were finally able to establish some zone time, worked the puck off the wall down low, and when Brayden Schenn found Jake Neighbours, he was able to find Fowler driving into the left circle and the defenseman sniped a wrister top shelf, short side at 11:57 to tie the game 2-2.

“Just tried to present my stick as an option if he needs it,” Fowler said of Neighbours. “That’s something we work on as a team and kind of offensive zone flow and we have to trust if a forward gets back there, he can get the puck to the net and I can crash for the rebound, or if he doesn’t like the shot, he can slide it over. Great play by him. Our whole shift, those guys worked really hard to get us that opportunity. I was happy to take advantage of it, but those guys made the whole play and made it happen for me.

“Credit to them, the first couple periods, they played a really solid game and didn’t give us much time and space. They were moving pucks fast and we didn’t get the chance to really establish our forecheck as we wanted to. It was frustrating for the first couple periods, but we came in here and tried to regroup in between and support one another. I thought we came out with a really strong third period and was able to get a couple big goals there to help us win. It was a great response by our guys.”

It was the juice needed, because at 12:19 when Holloway put the Blues ahead 3-2, it came off an icing and offensive zone face-off, a set play where Robert Thomas won the face-off to Holloway. He was supposed to find Jordan Kyrou as an option, but if it wasn’t there, get the puck to Thomas and enable to crafty center to make a play.

Thomas tried to find Kyrou from behind the net, but the puck caromed into the slot, and just like he did on the first goal he scored, Holloway used his speed to jump the play when the puck got caught in Michael Bunting’s skates and Holloway stole it and snapped it past Juuse Saros for the Blues’ first and only lead.

“We had a face-off play that we were running,” Holloway said. “’Tommer’ was hot on draws. I was supposed to go to to the corner and I get the puck, ‘Rouz’ was supposed to pop out, I give it low to ‘Tommer’ and then he looks slot. I was kind of rolling. I think he kind of missed ‘Rou’ and it was in Bunting’s skates and I was able to fish it out and get a good shot off.”

When all looked bleak, the Blues found a way, and Montgomery found something about his players again.

“That we’re resilient, that the confidence from everything that we’ve done is now come into the fact that we can win games in a lot of different fashions,” he said.

* Holloway goal key – The Blues needed something, anything to spark them. They had just three shots in the first period and little O-zone time, and Montgomery said if they can just find something positive in the second period, with the way the team has been winning and feeling confident, they would find a way.

Nathan Walker had a goal waved off earlier in the third period when a quick whistle blew a play dead – the second time in as many games it’s happened against Nashville.

But Holloway made another play. This time, again, hustling to jump into the neutral zone, disrupt a puck for Michael McCarron, and while falling down, create a loose puck for Thomas, who darted into the offensive zone, cut back and fed Holloway for a shot that got through Saros at 10:35 for a much-needed goal after Nashville had gone ahead 2-0 in the first on goals by Fedor Svechkov at 2:48 and Brady Skjei at 10:16.

“It was a neutral zone forecheck,” Holloway said. “As a F-2 there, you’re supposed to kind of take away the middle option. The guy went to the middle so I had a step in there. ‘Tommer’ made a great play, swooped in there, grabbed it. ‘Tommer’ is so good driving the ‘D’ down low and pulling it so I just tried to get him the play and he made a helluva pass to me. I was lucky enough for that one to squeak by.”

* Thomas/Schenn switch – Montgomery seems to have a pulse for when making a change, and he’s done so here in the past so many games when he flips Thomas and Schenn, so Thomas can play with Holloway and Kyrou, and Schenn goes with Neighbours and Zack Bolduc.

The Blues hadn’t had much offense, and had just 10 shots on goal through two periods, but only five through the first 30.

“Really it’s just looking for a spark,” Montgomery said. “I think we had five shots on net when I did it. It was 27 minutes into the game. I was just looking to put ‘Tommer’ with different players and ‘Schenner’ with different players and see if it sparked, and both lines scored. It worked.

“It’s just a feel that we’re not playing a normal possession game that we do and that maybe this will create something to spark, right.”

And it certainly did.

* A caveat for the end of the game was the Predators thought they had scored when Jonathan Marchessault put the puck in at the buzzer for what appeared to be a 3-3 game, but a quick review showed the puck was put in after the horn went off.

“I couldn’t hear anything,” Hofer said. “I was just getting ready for overtime. I was getting ready for overtime and all the boys came up to me and told us we won, so it was a good feeling.

“I knew it was close. I looked up and saw zeroes, but it’s happened to us a couple times this year with a couple seconds or what not. Luckily we were on the right side of it tonight.”

“It was huge. A little adversity for us at the start. We never gave up. We kept chipping at it. We got one in the second that gave us a chance in the third. It was a great third period for us. They didn’t have much. I thought we deserved that one tonight.”