“It doesn’t matter how it’s gone or how you draw it up,” Tkachuk said. “They lost the first three. We lost the next three. It’s even right now; it doesn’t matter what has happened to get to this point. It’s easy to forget. You just forget everything that’s happened throughout this whole season, really. Game 7, at home. How could you not be so jacked up? This is an absolutely incredible, incredible opportunity. So, yes, you want to recognize or remember some of the good things that helped you beat these guys earlier in the series, but I’m trying to forget all of it. Just go in there and win one game. This is what it comes down to.”

But just how feasible is it to forget what has happened over the past week? How easy is it to flip the switch and right the ship after three losses, including a pair of blowouts, when the season is on the line and now will be decided by a singular game?

“We can’t think about the past. We can’t think about the future,” Panthers center Anton Lundell said. “Just trying to live in the moment and go out there. ... I feel like the last few games where we had the opportunity to close [the series has] probably been more on everybody’s mind. Now, it just disappears. It’s only one game. We’re just gonna go out there and play.”

Added defenseman Brandon Montour: “we’re focused on just this last game. The history, the media around it, it is what it is. It’s two of the best teams in the league this year, two tough teams that are going to compete every game. It comes down to this last one, and it’s going to be a fun one.”

For Panthers coach Paul Maurice, the focus the past two days has been making sure his team has “handled the why” of how they got to this point.

The team has accomplished so much — winning the Atlantic Division, beating the Tampa Bay Lightning in the playoffs for the first time in franchise history, dispatching the Boston Bruins for a second consecutive year, knocking out the Presidents Trophy-winning New York Rangers in the Eastern Conference final and then winning the first three games against Edmonton.

The Oilers have evened the series up, but the Panthers still have a chance to close out the series — and the season — with a win on Monday.

“There’s a far bigger contextual story that means nothing to me now but means everything to you,” Maurice said. “That’s the stories you have to write, that’s what makes this whole thing awesome is the context of it. Nobody ever, ever has played on a backdoor rink in Canada and scored the Game 3 overtime winner in the qualifying round, OK? It’s one game, all this excites you. And that is the context of this game and the one we will live in that context.”

This and that

— The Panthers appear to be making another change to their top power-play unit, adding forward Vladimir Tarasenko to the group that consists of forwards Aleksander Barkov, Sam Reinhart and Tkachuk along with defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson, the latter of whom was moved up to the top unit before Game 6. Carter Verhaeghe would move to the second unit in this scenario.

— Neither goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky or defenseman Aaron Ekblad participated in practice on Sunday, but Maurice said both will be good to go for Game 7 on Monday.

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