TORONTO — The Florida Panthers entered Scotiabank Arena on Wednesday with a singular goal in mind.

“We need to steal one in their building,” defenseman Niko Mikkola said.

They did more than steal a game.

They absolutely dominated.

The Panthers routed the Toronto Maple Leafs, 6-1, in Game 5 of their second-round Stanley Cup playoffs series.

Florida now leads the best-of-7 series 3-2 after dropping the first two games of the series and has its first chance to clinch a spot in the Eastern Conference final on Friday when it hosts Game 6 at Amerant Bank Arena. Game time has not yet been announced by the NHL.

Sergei Bobrovsky came 66 seconds away from posting his second consecutive shutout — and third of the playoffs overall. He stopped the first 30 Toronto shots he faced before Nick Robertson scored a consolation goal with 1:06 left in regulation.

Bobrovsky went 147:58 between giving up goals, spanning the end of Florida’s overtime win in Game 3, all of Game 4 and the first 58:54 of Game 5.

Meanwhile, Aaron Ekblad, Dmitry Kulikov, Jesper Boqvist, Mikkola, A.J. Greer and Sam Bennett scored for Florida. Ekblad and Bennett were the only ones of the six to have a goal this postseason entering Wednesday.

Ekblad made it 1-0 with 5:22 left in the first period on a wrist shot from the right circle after getting a pass from Sam Reinhart. At that point in the game, the Panthers held a 29-7 edge in shot attempts and 13-3 edge in shots on goal over the Maple Leafs, according to the advanced hockey statistics website Natural Stat Trick.

Florida then blew the game open with three goals in the second period.

It started with Kulikov’s shot form the point 6:08 into the frame that bounced off Toronto forward Scott Laughton’s stick and into the net to put Florida up 2-0.

Boqvist, in the lineup in place of the injured Evan Rodrigues after being a healthy scratch in Games 3 and 4, made it 3-0 10:05 into the second when he scored from up close on a feed from Reinhart.

And then Mikkola capped scoring in the frame with a blast from the top of the left circle to make it 4-0 Florida with 5:59 left in the second.

Greer scored on a Jonah Gadjovich rebound 6:23 into the third to chase goalie Joseph Woll from the game and then Bennett added his team-leading sixth goal of the playoffs just under three minutes later on the power play.

It was domination in every sense of the word.

And it has the Panthers on the cusp of the Eastern Conference final for a third consecutive season.

This and that

— Wednesday marked just the second time in Panthers history that they had three defensemen score a goal in the same playoff game. The trio of Brian Campbell, Jason Garrison and Mike Weaver accomplished the feat on April 17, 2012 vs New Jersey.

The NHL record is four defensemen, which has been done 4 times but not since 1992.

— The Panthers have 17 players with at least one goal this postseason, the most of any team this year.

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