Panthers fuel conspiracy with major lineup changes on Saturday.

The Florida Panthers have just poured even more gas onto the fire that is currently one of the National Hockey League's hottest conspiracy theories.

Last week many began to speculate that the Florida Panthers were potentially sandbagging their position in the Atlantic Division standings in the hopes of finding themselves in an easier playoff matchup during the opening round of the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs. That was of course a wild accusation, but one that gained enough traction that it saw former NHL player Paul Bissonnette discussing it live on the TNT broadcast.

While it remains nothing more than a fun theory, the Panthers certainly weren't helping their case on Saturday when they made another series of lineup decisions that do not look like a team trying to win. There are several players that have been pulled out of the lineup including the likes of Aleksander Barkov, Sam Bennett, Sam Reinhart, and Dmitri Kulikov.

As you can see from the full lineup, we are talking about an extremely diminished Panthers lineup tonight:

Luostarinen — Lundell — Marchand
Verhaeghe — Rodrigues — Samoskevich
Boqvist — Sturm — Puljujarvi
Greer — Asplund — Gadjovich

Forsling — Balinskis
Mikkola — Jones
Megna — Schmidt

The idea behind this conspiracy theory is that the Panthers would attempt to slide all the way down into the Wild Card in order to face the Toronto Maple Leafs in the first round, but even with weaker lineups down the stretch that won't be easy. The Panthers already have 96 points on the season and would need the Ottawa Senators (92 points) to catch them in order to fall into a Wild Card spot. The Senators only have 3 games remaining in the regular season, making this scenario seem extremely unlikely.

Do you think the Panthers are sandbagging? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.