SUNRISE, Fla. — The Florida Panthers trailed the Toronto Maple Leafs by four goals in the second period and the jokes wrote themselves: They had the Maple Leafs right where they wanted them.
Sam Reinhart certainly felt this way. With 8:08 left in the second, the star forward scored on a power play to start to make a near-blowout interesting. He punctuated the goal with a massive fist pump and shouted, Let’s go, with an expletive inserted in the middle. He could feel it because the Panthers always do: Another comeback was brewing in Sunrise and the 7-6 come-from-behind, overtime win might have been their most spectacular one yet.
The Maple Leafs ripped off a 5-0 scoring run in the first and second periods, and Florida answered with one of its own in the second and third. The Panthers’ comeback happened so fast they scored a go-ahead goal with 11:59 left and Toronto, playing its second game in as many days, still managed to fight back to tie the game with 3:54 remaining before All-Star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau won the game with 2:13 left in the five-minute overtime period.
