When the week began, the Florida Panthers knew they’d probably have to play without Sergei Bobrovsky on Tuesday. The absences of Sam Bennett and Anthony Duclair, however, were an unexpected wrinkle.
Those three holes in the lineup — Bobrovsky off for rest, Bennett sidelined by an injury and Duclair out for an unspecified reason — were too much for the Panthers to overcome in their second game in as many nights, even against one of the worst teams in the NHL. Florida blew an early lead and fell 6-3 to the Philadelphia Flyers in Pennsylvania.
Goaltender Alex Lyon, who started in place of Bobrovsky to give the star goaltender a badly needed night off, gave up five goals on just 23 shots and the Panthers unraveled in the second period. After Florida knotted the game at 2-2 with 5:43 left in the period, the Flyers scored three goals in the next 4:38 — all in the span of 2:01 — to blow away the Panthers and give Wells Fargo Arena a rare reason to celebrate.
As bad as the loss was, Florida (36-28-7) does still remain in the second wild card, up by a point on the Penguins, who were off Tuesday and have now played one fewer game than the Panthers.
While a disastrous two-plus minutes doomed them, the Panthers got upset largely because they squandered a bevvy of chances early. After Florida went up 1-0 in just 1:15 a goal by All-Star right wing Matthew Tkachuk, Philadelphia (26-32-12) answered less than 3:30 later to tie the game and the Panthers never led again. They went 0 of 2 on the power play in the opening period, only got one goal out of its hot start despite recording the first seven shots of the game and went into the first intermission tied 1-1 despite racking up 19 shots on goal.
They had to dig out of a hole in the second period and did it once — All-Star center Aleksander Barkov set up star defenseman Brandon Montour for a game-tying goal at the end of a dominant shift — only to let the comeback effort go to waste a few minutes later.
Although Florida finished with 44 shots, the Flyers actually had more 5-on-5 high-danger chances than the Panthers and Florida’s only third-period goal came on a power play with its net empty to create a 6-on-4 advantage. The Panthers’ season-best seven-game points streak came to end in Philadelphia.
