Nico Daws made 36 saves as the New Jersey Devils halted the Florida Panthers winning streak at nine with a 4-1 road victory at Amerant Bank Arena.
The 23-year-old goaltender, who got plenty of help from the iron behind him, raised his record to 3-1 on the season and handed the Cats their first loss of 2024. Among Daws’ best was a late first period stop on Oliver Ekman-Larsson and a glove save on Sam Reinhart early in the third right after he hit the post.
Alexander Holtz opened the scoring 3:50 into the action when he sent the puck towards the goal from the outer edge of the right circle and it beat Sergei Bobrovsky up high off the stick of Dmitry Kulikov. The assists on Holtz’ tenth went to Simon Nemec and Curtis Lazar.
The Devils would tack on another at 14:45 to go up by two. Jesper Bratt beat Kulikov to the net only to get poke-checked by Bobrovsky. Michael McLeod would follow-up and put the puck home off of Bratt’s skate.
Former Panther Erik Haula grew the lead early in the second, firing in a loose puck after Aleksander Barkov smacked the vulcanized rubber away from Nico Hischier. Brandon Montour tried to knock it away from danger, but Haula did a hell of a job to break that attempt up and quickly score.
The Cats finally got on the board with 33 seconds left in the middle frame and Colin Miller off for slashing Sam Bennett. Reinhart extended his scoring streak to six games with a one-timer to finish off a beautiful between-the-legs pass from Matthew Tkachuk after he received a hard pass down low from Montour.
Daws would stop everything the Panthers threw at him (16 shots on goal) in the third and John Marino would complete the scoring into an empty net with 19 ticks left on the clock.
It just wasn’t Florida’s night. The fell behind early and couldn’t overcome this time, despite outshooting New Jersey 29-10 over the final forty minutes. So, we say goodbye to the winning streak. The run was the third-longest in any Panthers season, behind only a 13-gamer from March 29-April 23, 2022 and a 12-game winning streak from December 15, 2015 through January 10, 2016. Florida gets back at it on Monday when they host the Anaheim Ducks in a holiday matinĂ©e.
Fire & Brimstone
- Sam Reinhart’s six-game goal-scoring streak tied him with Matthew Tkachuk for second-longest in Panthers history, one game behind Pavel Bure. The Russian Rocket’s record seven-game run came back in March of 2001.
- Speaking of Tkachuk, his primary assist on Florida’s only goal gave him points in eight consecutive games. Tkachuk has amassed seven goals and 17 points over that span.
- Nico Daws’ 36-save effort raised his save percentage to .917 and lowered his GAA to 2.77. Daws played 25 games for the Devils during the 2021-22 season and went 10-11-1.
- Unlucky Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 18 of 21 shots. The loss ended Bob’s run of seven-straight wins.
- Jesper Bratt’s goal was his 16th of the campaign, tying him with Tyler Toffoli for the team lead. Bratt topped the Devils with five shots on goal.
- Gustav Forsling logged 24:07 of ice time and finished with a game-high six shots and a block.