The Florida Panthers got goals from five different skaters and 28 saves from Sergei Bobrovsky, who snapped a personal three-game losing streak, to broom the Anaheim Ducks by a 5-2 count at Honda Center.
After getting foiled nine times by Spencer Knight in Sunrise, Frank Vatrano finally beat a Florida goalie to open the scoring at 4:57 with Evan Rodrigues off for tripping. Ryan Strome snapped a cross to Troy Terry and he went back the other way to Vatrano in the slot. Vatrano fired a shot just inside the near post for his 12th of the season.
The Panthers responded with a pretty passing play of their own 4:01 later to equalize. Aleksander Barkov gathered a loose puck near the blue line and fed Matthew Tkachuk, who crossed to down low to Sam Reinhart. Reinhart received the pass on forehead and then went to his backhand to slide the puck by Lukas Dostal as he skated past him.
Florida forged ahead at 17:57 when A.J. Greer chased down Tomas Nosek’s backhand clear off the boards and found Rodrigues on the opposite side of the ice. Dostal stopped Rodrigues’ initial shot, but the rebound came right back to eRod and he banked his second chance in off the inside of the keeper’s right pad, becoming the eighth Panther to hit double-digit goals this season. Good hustle and nice pass by Greer.
Carter Verhaeghe put the Cats up by two with 1:11 remaining in the first after Mackie Samoskevich intercepted a Jacob Trouba pass near the Anaheim goal and left him the puck. Verhaeghe curled out into the right circle and put his shot into the top corner to snap a six-game goalless drought.
The Ducks would take all of 23 seconds to reduce the deficit back to one. Mason McTavish collected the puck after Radko Gudas dumped it out of his own zone and it bounced past Uvis Balinskis. McTavish burst over the blue line on a 2-on-1 with Cutter Gauthier and chose to shoot, solving Bobrovsky’s glove with a heavy wrister.
After a scoreless second period that saw Dostal foil Eetu Luostarinen on a breakaway, Sam Bennett finally got one! Bennett played Samoskevich’s centering pass from below the goal line off his skate and smacked a shot home from the high slot 19 seconds into the frame for his first goal since December 3, 2024, with second assist going to Luostarinen. Bennett had gone twenty painful games without lighting the lamp.
Balinskis completed the scoring by flinging a wrister from long range through traffic at the 4:17 mark with the assists credited to Nosek and Verhaeghe, who each picked their second point of the night, joining young Samoskevich.
A pretty solid white jersey effort from the Panthers, who clamped down after a wide-open first period and won consecutive games for the first time in 2025. Goals from Bennett, Verhaeghe and Reinhart… finally. After sweeping the season series, Florida is now 9-0-1 in last ten games against the Ducks. The road trip continues tonight in Los Angeles against the usually very difficult Kings.
Nothing Rhymes With Orange
- Sergei Bobrovsky posted his 19th win and is 5-0 with a 2.36 GAA and .922 save percentage against the Ducks since signing with Florida prior to the 2019-20 season.
- Aleksander Barkov’s assist on Sam Reinhart’s marker was the 750th point of his career. Reinhart is tied with Toronto’s William Nylander for second in the league with 28 goals.
- A couple of firsts in a Panthers uniform for Tomas Nosek. Nosek delivered his first multi-point game as a Cat and produced a point in consecutive games for the first time.
- Troy Terry’s helper on Frank Vatrano’s goal was his 20th of the season and 265th career point. Terry is now all alone in tenth place on the franchise scoring list.
- Points have been hard to come by lately for rookie Mackie Samoskevich, however, his two-assist performance gave him three in his last three games. Samsokevich is still looking for his first goal of the new year.
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