Matthew Tkachuk notched his first two goals of the season and added an assist to power the Florida Panthers to a 6-3 win over the New York Islanders at UBS Arena.
The Panthers scored the game’s final six goals after falling behind when the Islanders lit the lamp three times in the first 11:41 of the contest.
Dennis Cholowski beat a heavily-screened Spencer Knight, after a Casey Cizikas faceoff win, at the 1:32 mark; Kyle Palmieri was left alone in front of the net and stabbed in his own rebound, assists to Ryan Pulock and Maxim Tsypalkov, at 6:01; and then Brock Nelson (also left all alone) knocked in Tsypalkov’s miss, which rebounded off the back boards. Palmieri drew the secondary assist on that goal.
Rough start for the first pairing of Aaron Ekblad and Gustav Forsling, who were the ice for all three goals and looking disinterested in actual defending.
A cherry-picking Sam Reinhart caught the Islanders defense completey out of position and made them pay after taking a bouncing pass from Eetu Luostarinen and firing the puck past Semyon Varlamov’s glove at 13:41. The second assist on Reinhart’s sixth went to Anton Lundell.
Tkachuk pulled the Panthers within one 6:38 into the second by jamming the puck home after Carter Verhaeghe’s backhand from the slot hit the post. Dmitry Kulikov helped make this one happen by keeping the puck in zone, but didn’t get an assist. The goal came after Tkachuk and Varlamov made contact with other and the goaltender took a whack and ended up losing his stick. Tkachuk bumped him again before depositing the rebound.
Kulikov would get a helper with 1:44 left in the frame after he sent Mackie Samoskevich away and the rookie absolutely flew up the right side and scored his first NHL goal via the wraparound. Huge moment for the 21-year-old Samoskevich to tie the tilt. Spencer Knight also picked up an assist on the play.
The Panthers would forge ahead 6:19 into the third when Tkachuk took a pass from Niko Mikkola and flung the puck towards the goal from the left boards and it bounced in off Sam Bennett after the center won an offensive zone faceoff. That’s seven goals in ten games for Florida’s second Sam.
Tkachuk added an insurance marker 3:30 later with the Cats on a power play. He took a return pass from Adam Boqvist and after getting himself into shooting position, solved Varlamov with a wrist shot from the top of the right circle. Lundell got his second assist on the night on Tkachuk’s second goal of the game.
The Islanders would get a late man-advantage and pull Varlamov, but it was the Panthers who got the 6-on-4 goal when Forsling scored into the empty net from below his own goal line with 2:17 left on the clock.
Hats off to the Panthers for overcoming a terrible start to up their record to 6-3-1. After giving up three goals (two of which were not his fault) in the first, Knight didn’t get flustered and was perfect the rest of the way, stopping all 19 shots faced over the final forty minutes. There’s been some inconsistency over these first ten games, but the Panthers are playing at a 107-point pace, and that’s with Aleksander Barkov missing eight games and Tkachuk missing five.
Florida, winners of two straight and 5-1-1 over their last seven, will shuffle off to Buffalo, looking to make it a perfect road trip.