The Florida Panthers broke open a tight game with a late second period goal and went on to rout the Carolina Hurricanes 6-0 at Amerant Bank Arena.
Spencers Knight (11 saves) and Martin (9 saves) were the story in the first period, with both keepers maintaining a clean sheet. Knight came up big when he denied NHL scoring leader Martin Necas’ break-in with 7:33 left in the frame. Martin make solid stops on a falling Mackie Samoskevich and a Aleksander Barkov shot that pinged off Evan Rodrigues before hitting his shoulder.
After a Anton Lundell marker was wiped off the scoreboard due to an earlier offsides, Aaron Ekblad fired home his first of the season unassisted at 6:42 with Martin down-and-out after the puck was knocked away from near the crease after Gustav Forsling put it in the danger area.
The Panthers would kill off late penalties to Lundell (cross-checking) and Matthew Tkachuk (tripping) to maintain its one-goal lead. Knight made a stellar save on Sebastian Aho on the first of the two calls.
Thirteen seconds after killing off Tkachuk’s minor, Andrei Svechnikov took a delay-of-game that set the stage for an unbelievable power-play goal.
Following an offensive zone faceoff, Barkov took a short pass from Sam Reinhart and whipped a cross over to Tkachuk, who immediately bumped the puck back across the slot to a wide-open Mackie Samsokevich. The rookie slammed it into back of the net at 19:59, doubling Florida’s advantage. Simply amazing!
Samoskevich’s buzzer-beater seemed to crush Carolina’s collective soul, as they were not up the task of dealing with the Panthers in third period. The Cats out-shot the Hurricanes 16-2 and poured in four more goals during a torrid 4:42 span.
Sam Bennett started the run of goals off when he burst from the penalty box to take a perfect pass from Eetu Luostarinen and drove the puck past Martin at 8:19. Lundell started the play off by forcing Shane Gostisbehere into a turnover.
After taking a return pass from Sam Reinhart, Tkachuk would set up another gorgeous power-play goal by finding Barkov in the slot for the easy put-away at 11:37. Tkachuk’s pass was so good all Barkov had to do was tap it into the open net.
Adam Boqvist would notch his first goal as a Panther eleven seconds later to chase the beleaguered Martin. After sending A.J. Greer over the blue line, Boqvist drove the net, got the puck back and backhanded it home while it was on edge to put the Cats up by five.
Florida’s power play would click a third time to complete the scoring with 6:59 remaining. Carter Verhaeghe dropped back to Nate Schmidt at the point and he sent the puck to Rodrigues in the high slot. Rodrigues redirected the pass towards the net against the grain and there was nothing rookie Yaniv Perets could do to stop it.
After a busy first forty minutes, Knight had a easy go of it in the third to post his first shutout of the season and the team’s second.
That was a really impressive performance by the Panthers, who got stronger as the game wore on and simply blew the Hurricanes off the ice in the final frame. Thirteen of Florida’s skaters collected a point with Barkov and Tkachuk the only ones to produce two. The Cats went 3-for-6 on the power play while the penalty kill took care of Carolina’s two chances.
Category Five
- Spencer Knight finished with 20 saves to post the fourth shutout of his career and his first since November 9, 2022 when he blanked the Hurricanes 3-0. Knight lowered his GAA to 2.31 and upped his save percentage to .911.
- Aleksander Barkov registered his 146th power-play assist on Mackie Samoskevich’s first career power-play goal, tying Jonathan Huberdeau for the most in team history.
- In addition to being his first of the campaign, Aaron Ekblad’s goal was also the 25th game-winning goal of his career. Ekblad played a game-high 23:12 and matched Sam Bennett and Samoskevich with a game-high four shots.
- Speaking of Bennett, he has scored goals in three straight games. Bennett is second on team with 12 and is third in scoring with 23 points.
- After getting held off the score sheet by the Cats in both games, Carolina’s Martin Necas is no longer the NHL scoring leader. He now trails Minnesota’s Kirill Kaprizov by one point.
StatCard
