The Florida Panthers’ postseason hopes were teetering, their top two centers were injured and out of the lineup, and the looming specter of the Friday trade deadline left them at a pivotal moment in their season, so, of course, all they did Tuesday was traveling across the state to face their Stanley Cup-contending rival and pull out a win against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The Panthers won 4-1 with an often-dominant, ultimately nerve-wracking performance in Tampa. Florida outshot the Lightning, 33-18, in 5-on-5 action and raced out to a 3-0 lead, but had to weather a barrage of Tampa Bay power plays in the second half of the game and win multiple challenges to hang on for the badly needed win.
After the Panthers took a 3-0 lead, the Lightning had one goal taken off the board in the second period. when Paul Maurice successfully challenged for offside. After it cut Florida’s lead to 3-1, Tampa Bay had another wiped away in the third when the coach Maurice successfully challenged for goaltender interference.
The Panthers went 4 of 5 on the penalty kill — with all three Lightning power plays coming in the final 30 minutes — and used three first-period goals to win despite not scoring again until Tampa Bay pulled star goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy to get an extra skater on the ice.
With centers Aleksander Barkov and Sam Bennett out, Florida got those three first-period goals from its next three centers in the pecking order.
Six-time All-Star forward Eric Staal, 38, scored on a long-range tip-in with 15:41 left in the first period. Anton Lundell scored with 4:04 left in the first when he outraced Tampa Bay to a loose puck in the offensive zone and drove to the net to beat star goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy. Fellow forward Eetu Luostarinen made it 3-0 just 1:43 later after right wing Anthony Duclair, playing in just his second game of the year after offseason surgery to repair his torn left Achilles tendon, put a puck in front of the net.
It was almost even 4-0: Defenseman Gustav Forsling thought he had a power-play goal with three seconds left in the period, but Lightning coach Jon Cooper successfully challenged for goaltender interference after All-Star right wing Matthew Tkachuk hit Vasilevsky’s glove hand with his stick.
Either way, it was an astonishingly dominant opening period for Florida. The Panthers outshot Tampa Bay, 16-4, in the first and held the Lightning without a shot for the final 15:21 of the period. By the end of the first, Florida had scored nine goals its last four periods against Vasilevskiy, who is once again contending for the Vezina Trophy after winning the award in 2019.
It was about as encouraging a 20 minutes as the Panthers could realistically have put together. Barkov is out with an apparent hand injury, Bennett is out with a lower-body injury, Duclair is still working his way back into the lineup after debuting over the weekend, Florida’s playoff hopes are on the ropes after losing to the Buffalo Sabres last week and the Panthers, whose eight come-from-behind wins are still tied for fewest in the NHL, got exactly the start they needed to settle the crowd at Amalie Arena.
The rest of the game — and particularly the final 30 minutes — did not go nearly as smoothly.
The successful challenge on Forsling’s would-be goal was only the first of three, with the Panthers winning a couple in the final two periods. Florida’s parade to the penalty box meant Tampa Bay actually outshot the Panthers, XX, in the third period. Florida didn’t score a single goal on 21 shots in the second and the Lightning was always one shot away away from putting a real scare into the Panthers.
Star goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, though, stopped all 19 shots he faced in the third period and 29 of 30 he faced in total. Duclair finally scored an empty-net goal with 4.9 seconds left. Florida won a game it could hardly afford to lose.
The win temporarily vaulted the Panthers back within a point of the second wild card with 20 games to go and they’ll have another massive opportunity this weekend when they host the Pittsburgh Penguins, one of the teams they’re chasing, on Saturday at FLA Live Arena in Sunrise.
They’re still hanging around in the hunt for the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs.
