The Florida Panthers dropped another one, this time losing 7-4 to the Colorado Avalanche at Amerant Bank Arena in the first of a three-game homestand.
Jonathan Drouin scored his first two goals of the season and Logan O’Connor, Samuel Girard, Mikko Rantanen, Oliver Kylington, Valeri Nichuskin also scored for Colorado, which upped its winning streak to three games. In addition to his goal, Rantanen assisted on three others.
Each of Drouin goals erased Florida leads. The first, which rebounded off his body after Sergei Bobrovsky denied Cale Makar, came 8:21 after Carter Verhaeghe opened the scoring, from Anton Lundell and Mackie Samoskevich, with a sharped-angled shot 52 seconds into the game. Aleksander Barkov gave the Panthers the lead back at 15:44, when he put in a rebound after Matthew Tkachuk’s nifty one-handed deflection of Niko Mikkola’s shot.
Drouin’s second marker 34 ticks into the second kicked off an Avalanche of goals as the visitors carved up Florida’s defense and turned a 2-1 deficit into a 5-2 lead.
Sam Reinhart stopped the bleeding at 18:40 when he deflected Aaron Ekblad’s one-timer past Alexander Georgiev’s glove after Tkachuk fed the defenseman. The goal extended Reinhart’s point streak to 13 games, matching his career-high.
After the embarrassing middle frame, the Panthers would test Georgiev 19 times in third, but they only were able to beat him once (officially) and Anton Lundell’s goal, from Samoskevich and Uvis Balinskis, came after Kylington sniped Bobrovsky with 4:11 remaining, off a great Nichuskin pass, for his first of the season and then Nichuskin tacked on an empty-netter.
The Panthers appeared to cash in on a 5-on-3 opportunity when Ekblad ripped a shot through traffic past Georgeiv at the 4:17 mark with Tkachuk providing the screen. Unfortunately, Tkachuk was deemed to have interfered, a very ticky-tack call that negated what would’ve a big goal.
Florida has now dropped three in a row and lost five of its last six games. Paul Maurice shuffled the lines last night, but it wasn’t enough to get the Cats back in the win column. The Panthers were fine in the first and played a strong third period, but the second was a complete disaster. They’ll need to be better on Monday when the Ovechkin-less Washington Capitals come to town.
Peaks & Valleys
- Sam Reinhart’s 16th goal has him tied with Edmonton’s Leon Draisaitl for the most in the NHL. His 13-game point streak is second-longest (tied with Pavel Bure and Jonathan Huberdeau) in franchise history. Mike Hoffman had a 17-game streak during the 2018-19 season.
- Cale Makar, who set up both of Jonathan Drouin goals, posted his 100th career multi-point game. He accomplished this feat in only 336 NHL games. Bobby Orr (307 games) is the only defenseman to do it faster.
- Speaking of multi-point games, Mackie Samoskevich finished with the first one of his young career, getting helpers on the first and final goals of the tilt.
- Tough night for Sergei Bobrovsky, who gave up six goals on 24 shots. Alexander Georgiev made 27 stops, including a key glove save on Carter Verhaeghe to keep his team up by two midway through the third.
- In addition to notching his fourth goal on his only shot, Aleksander Barkov was again a beast in the faceoff circle, going 14-for-19. The captain was also credited with a block and a hit.