Down three goals and missing injured captain Aleksander Barkov, the Florida Panthers rallied to force overtime before losing to 4-3 to the San Jose Sharks when rookie defenseman Luca Cagnoni notched his first NHL goal.
Former Panther Mason Marchment opened the scoring with 5:40 left in the first period, beating Akira Schmid unassisted with a wrister through traffic.
San Jose doubled its lead 5:52 into the second when Macklin Celebrini stole the puck from Matthew Tkachuk and headed up ice with Will Smith on a shorthanded 2-on-1 break. Celebrini crossed to Smith and his hard wrist shot from the right circle flew by Schmid’s blocker.
The Panthers suffered a potentially devastating blow to their season at 8:07 when Barkov fell awkwardly while battling for the puck with Darnell Nurse and Zack Ostapchuk. Barkov immediately left the rink, throwing his gloves to the ground in frustration. Cross your fingers as that looked pretty serious…
Shortly after, the Sharks would tack on another special teams goal, this time on the power play, to extend its lead to three. After Schmid made a fantastic save on Celebrini’s wrap-around attempt, Smith was able to crash the crease and stuff the puck home at 10:37. Cagnoni drew the secondary assist on Smith’s second of the night.
Eetu Luostarinen would start the comeback late in the frame, cleaning up a rebound on the backhand after Lars Eller deflected Aaron Ekblad shot down into the pads of Yaroslav Askarov. It was Florida’s first power-play goal of the new campaign.
Luostarinen got another 5:01 into the third to pull the pesky Cats within one. Anton Lundell sent the puck back to Dmitry Kulikov, who slung a shot that first struck Luostarinen in the high slot and then bounced off Cagnoni on its way by a befuddled Askarov.
Matthew Tkachuk tied the tilt seventeen seconds later when he was set up by Sam Bennett and took his time before shooting the puck between the legs of Nolan Allan and past a screened Askarov. Bennett checked Michael Misa along the left boards to free the puck and made a nice pass to the waiting Tkachuk.
Overtime belonged to the speedy Sharks. They dominated the extra session and ended it on their sixth shot when Smith collected an errant Celebrini pass at center and then re-entered the zone before spotting an open Cagnoni, who solved the moving Schmid along the ice.
Props to the gutsy Panthers, who were without late scratch Gustav Forsling, for overcoming a rough start, the loss of Barkov and three-point performances from both Smith and Celebrini to pluck a point from the rising Sharks in San Jose’s season-opener. After going 0-for-7 on the power play in Raleigh, they finally did get a goal, but failed to score five other times with a man-advantage and gave up a shorty, No bueno. They need to improve in that department asap. Can’t have the power play costing you points on the road. We’ll hold our breath and hope for “positive” news on Barkov when he is properly assessed today.
The Five Hole
- A big night for hardworking third-liner Eetu Luostarinen, who scored twice, including a rare power-play goal – the sixth of his career. Luostarinen played 16:28 and was credited with three shots and a block.
- Akira Schmid made his regular season debut with Florida and stopped 28 of 32 shots faced.
- Brady Tkachuk is still looking for his first point with his new team, but he did lead the club with four shots on goal and matched Boko Imama with a team-high five hits.
- Uvis Balinkis filled in for Gustav Forsling and made an impact. Balinskis dropped Collin Graf to win their second period bout and finished with three hits, a shot and a block.
- Veteran center Lars Eller collected his first point as a Panther with his primary assist on Luostarinen’s man-advantage goal.
Stats Card
