The Florida Panthers opened the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs with a hard-fought 3-2 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning Sunday afternoon at Amerant Bank Arena. It’s the first time the Cats have won Game 1 in their three playoff series against the Lightning.
Sam Reinhart opened the scoring 6:17 into the first by deflecting in Gustav Forsling’s wrist shot from the left side after Aleksander Barkov was able to track down an errant pass from Vladimir Tarasenko.
After being completely bottled up for most of the opening frame, the Lightning would draw even at the 16:04 mark. A defensive zone faceoff loss by Bennett led to Steven Stamkos to firing a shot on Sergei Bobrovsky that was stopped. A heady play by Anthony Cirelli to quickly lift Bennett’s stick allowed him to put another shot on goal that created a juicy rebound for Brandon Hagel, who slipped Niko Mikkola, to pound home.
The teams spent the second period blanketing other each other, combing for just ten shots on goal, but a late holding call on Nicholas Paul opened the door for the Panthers to regain the lead early in the third.
Carter Verhaeghe took a pass from Matthew Tkachuk and sent the puck back down low to Barkov and then switched sides and worked his way behind the stationary Lightning defense to receive a gorgeous perfect back door return feed from the captain to light the lamp 58 seconds in. The primary gave Barkov the 10th mulit-point game of his playoff career.
Following a huge pad save by Bobrovsky on Stamkos, Tkachuk would seemingly ice the game with Andrei Vasilevskiy off for an extra attacker after Aaron Ekblad’s clear caromed to him off the glass and he calmly converted from center ice with 2:05 left on the clock.
An iffy call from the zebras put the visitors on a late power-play and with Vasilevskiy off again, Stamkos took advantage of the 6-on-4 situation, roofing a perfect shot on Bobrovsky after taking a cross from Nikita Kucherov with 9.3 remaining in regulation. The second assist on the goal went to Brayden Point.
The Lightning won the ensuing draw, but Brandon Montour was able to get to the dump in and kill the rest of the clock, giving the Panthers the first game of the series. A huge win as the Cats are 5-1 in the postseason when winning Game 1. Game 2 is set for Tuesday night in Sunrise.
Nuts & Bolts
- Sam Reinhart’s series-opening marker was his 58th combined goal of the season. One more and he’ll tie Pavel Bure’s franchise record of 59. Reinhart finished with a game-high five shots and three blocks and two hits.
- Carter Verhaeghe earned First Star honors for his franchise-leading 16th career playoff goal which put the Panthers in the driver’s eat early in the third.
- As expected, Game 1 was a physical affair with the teams combining for 109 hits. Lightning defenseman Anthony Dumba dished out a game-high ten hits. Eetu Luostarinen led the Panthers with six.
- Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 17 of 19 to collect his 30th postseason win. Andrei Vasilevskiy made 25 saves in a quality effort for Tampa Bay.
- Gustav Forsling’s equaled the franchise record for most postseason assists by defenseman (11) that was jointly held by Robert Svehla and Aaron Ekblad, only to see Ekblad forge ahead with a helper on the ENG. Forsling logged 21:08 TOI and was credited with two shots on goal and a hit.
- For the other side of Game 1, stop by Raw Charge.