Four minutes away from another home ice loss, the Florida Panthers finally generated the necessary burst to post a stunning 4-2 comeback win over the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 4 to take a three to one lead in the series.
It was apropos that the defense that led the way, with Aaron Ekblad and Seth Jones scoring goals a franchise-record eleven seconds apart to turn near-defeat into glorious victory.
Ekblad tied the tilt at two with 3:47 remaining in regulation. After holding the puck in at the right point, Ekblad arose, dished off to Sam Reinhart and made his way to the slot. The heady Reinhart patiently waited for Ekblad to arrive at his destination and snapped a long, low shot on goal that required a pad save from Andrei Vasilevskiy. The rebound came right to Ekblad, who flicked it past Vasilevskiy’s glove for his first goal since returning from his 20-game suspension.
A sweet bit of karma for Ekblad, who had an earlier tying power-play goal waved off at the 7:02 mark, due to Sam Bennett being caught offside by replay.
The Panthers won the ensuing faceoff, and after Dmitry Kulikov fired in around the boards, Anton Lundell got a piece of the puck before Seth Jones collected at the right point. Jones’ knuckling shot struck Ryan McDonagh’s skate and then the inside of Vasilevskiy’s arm before dribbling past the dumbfounded netminder, sending the crowd at Amerant Bank Arena into a deafening frenzy. With the helper, Lundell became the sixth Panther to hit 30 career playoff points.
As soon as Vasilevskiy’s came off for an extra attacker, Aleksander Barkov was able to backhand the puck off the half boards to Carter Verhaeghe, and he found the empty net from the neutral zone at 18:20 to seal the deal.
Florida opened the scoring for the fourth-straight game 9:06 into the second period, thanks to Brad Marchand negating an icing. After Marchand touched the puck, Eetu Luostarinen moved in to take control in the right corner. Luostarinen passed to Marchand, and he found Anton Lundell wide-open in front for the Finnish finish.
The Lightning equalized at 12:21 when Nick Perbix flung a rising shot from the top of the right circle that struck the screening Emil Lilleberg. Mitchell Chaffee was in position to rap the rebound underneath Sergei Bobrovsky’s leg for the first postseason goal of his career.
Tampa Bay would forge ahead a franchise-record eleven seconds later to suck even more air out of the building. Brayden Point beat Barkov cleanly on the post-goal draw and the Lightning dumped in to the Florida zone. Gustav Forsling swatted the puck right to Jake Guentzel, who passed to Erik Cernak. Cernak sent a shot through a narrowing gap between Ekblad and Nikita Kucherov, who were coming together in front of the net, that found the top of the net.
After starting the third period of Game 3 by surrendering a key goal, the Panthers put themselves in a bad spot yet again. This time, it was Niko Mikkola getting a five-minute major for boarding Zemgus Girgensons nineteen seconds in. Mikkola got tossed, but his mates picked up the slack with an absolutely brilliant penalty kill to keep it a one-goal game. HUGE!
Like the second and third games of the series, this was mostly another slog, with both teams putting in a pair of shots in matching 11-second spans, somehow manufacturing offense seemingly out of nowhere amidst the double defensive blankets. The Panthers capitalized on their bounces late and that was the difference in one of, if not the craziest finish to a game this heated rivalry has ever seen, giving them a two-game lead, instead of a sickening split.
Nuts & Bolts
- Seth Jones notched his sixth career playoff goal and first as a member of the Panthers to win it. The media’s First Star calmly logged a game-high 26:16 of ice time and posted one one hit and a plus-one rating.
- In addition to setting a franchise record, the goals by Aaron Ekblad and Jones marked the fastest two goals by defensemen for one team in the league’s long postseason history.
- Anton Lundell was the contest’s only multi-point player. Lundell finished with three shots, one hit, one block and logged 2:42 of shorthanded ice time for the Panthers, who snuffed out both Lightning power-play chances.
- Before being shown the door by the zebras, Niko Mikkola was credited with a game-high eight hits.
- A.J. Greer appeared in his first career NHL playoff game. Greer played just 4:19, had two hits, and was on the ice for Mitchell Chaffee’s tying goal.
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