When it comes to the Florida Panthers at home and on the road it’s definitely a tale of two kitties. After rolling to four straight wins at FLA Live Arena, the Cats left the friendly confines of Sunrise and fell 6-5 in a shootout to the Dallas Stars.
Aleksander Barkov notched a power-play goal on a one-timer from Jonathan Huberdeau to open the scoring and a beautiful shorthanded goal to put the Panthers up 2-1 eighteen seconds into the middle frame. Michael Raffl scored the Stars first period goal from John Klingberg and Radek Faksa. Barkov also drew the secondary assist on Huberdeau’s goal with 29 seconds left in regulation time that earned the Cats a point.
After Denis Gurianov answered Barkov’s shorty on the same power play to tie the score at two, Patric Hornqvist put the Panthers back on top at the 4:07 mark by deflecting Gustav Forsling’s pass by Braden Holtby. Radko Gudas collected the second assists on Hornqvist’s seventh.
The Stars forged ahead on goals from Jason Robertson and Tyler Seguin that came in a 28-second span before MacKenzie Weegar knotted the score at four with 2:43 to go in the second. Weegar took a centering pass in the slot from Eetu Luostarinen and worked his way into the right circle before beating Holtby short side.
A giveaway by Sergei Bobrovsky allowed Gurianov to feed Jamie Benn for the fifth Dallas goal 6:26 into the third.
The Panthers sent the game to overtime with Bobrovsky off an extra attacker. After Barkov won an offensive zone draw, Huberdeau played catch with Aaron Ekblad, before unleashing a long wrister that eluded Holtby. It was Ekblad’s third assist of the night. He also had helpers on both of Barkov’s goals.
Dallas outshot the Panthers 4-0 in overtime, but the Cats held on to get to the shootout, where the Stars got consecutive conversion from Joe Pavelski and Robertson whileHuberdeau and Anton Lundell, came up empty. It’s on to Raleigh with another point in the bag, but the road record stands at a very mediocre 4-4-5.
Giants & Dwarfs
- Jonathan Huberdeau has racked up 10 points in his past four games. Huberdeau is second in the NHL in assists (32) and fourth in the league in scoring with 44 points.
- Joe Thornton became the sixth player in NHL history to play in 1,700 regular season games, joining Patrick Marleau (1,779), Gordie Howe (1,767), Mark Messier (1,756), Jaromir Jagr (1,733) and Ron Francis (1,731).
- Jason Robertson’s second period goal extended his home point streak to nine games. He has scored five goals and seven assists during the streak.
- Sergei Bobrovsky finished the game with 31 saves. In addition to gifting the Stars their fifth goal, he let Jamie Benn’s shot leak through him allowing First Star Denis Gurianov, who finished with three points, to knock the puck over the goal line.
- In addition to his goal Patric Hornqvist picked up his 10th assist of the season. Anton Lundell had the second helper on Aleksander Barkov’s SHG.
- Braden Holtby faced 42 shots and made 37 stops to pick up his sixth win of the season.
- Olli Juolevi tagged in for Lucas Carlsson, who scored in Tuesday’s win over Calgary, and played just 8:11 and was the only Panther to post a -2 rating./
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