Comments / New

Recap: Six different Panthers score in 6-1 rout of struggling Kings

Roberto Luongo made 18 saves to tie Ed Belfour for third place in NHL history with 484th wins and the Florida Panthers got goals from six different players, routing the slumping Los Angeles Kings by a 6-1 count to close out a long homestand at the BB&T Center.

Aleksander Barkov, Jonathan Huberdeau and Keith Yandle each had a goal and an assist for the Panthers, Vincent Trocheck opened the scoring off a pretty set up from Evgenii Dadonov and Jamie McGinn, playing in his 600th career NHL game, and defenseman Ian McCoshen notched their first goals of the 2018-19 campaign,

Huberdeau gave Florida a 2-1 at 13:33 of the middle frame when he converted on a breakaway upon leaving the penalty box and picking up a loose puck at the Kings blue line when Anze Kopitar missed the net in the Florida zone.

Later in the frame, Barkov and Yandle scored power-play goals, after penalties to Derek Forbort and Oscar Fantenberg gave the Cats a 5-on-3 advantage, to put the game away.

Barkov has 11 points (6G/5A) in the last four games while Huberdeau has posted 8 on four goals and four assists.

In the third, McGinn picked up a loose puck and scored unassisted from the right dot at 6:14 and McCoshen chased Jonathan Quick, who departed with 17 saves, a scant 28 seconds later when he hammered home a pass from Troy Brouwer from long range with Henrik Borgstrom, who drew the secondary helper, providing a screen.

Jack Campbell came in to mop up and stopped both of the shots he faced,

Dustin Brown tallied the only Kings goal in the first period after stripping Yandle at the blue line and skating in on Luogno before roofing a shot from in close to tie the score.

Once Luongo passes Belfour, he will take aim at Patrick Roy, who is second in all-time wins with 551. I’m not sure if Luongo will play long enough to win 58 more games, but if he finishes out his contract like he says planning on, he will likely pass the former Canadien and Avalanche Hall-of-Famer.

***

Oh, if they could only end like this more often… Once Huberdeau lit the match, the Panthers caught fire and continued to score goals in bunches. They struck three times in a 5:49 span in the second, with the last two coming 1:06 apart, and as mentioned above, McGinn and McCoshen tallied 28 seconds apart in the final frame. After taking a season-high eight penalties on Thursday, the Cats took just one minor, an interference call on Huberdeau, against the Kings. Way to clean that up, boys. They scored six goals on 23 shots against Quick and held Los Angeles to just 19 shots, making things easy on Luongo, who saw his first action since February 12.  The Panthers are 10-5 in their last 15 games and after a long run Sunrise will hit the road with stops in Denver, Glendale and Las Vegas.

Video Recap (courtesy of NHL.com)

Talking Points