Florida Panthers were soundly beaten 5-2 by the highly-motivated Tampa Bay Lightning at Benchmark International Arena.
The Lightning carried much of the play in the first period, however, it was the shorthanded Panthers who opened the scoring at 11:52 when Eetu Luostarinen beat goaltender Brandon Halverson to Gustav Forsling’s dump in. Luostarinen knocked the puck into the air, gloved it down and smacked it into the yawning net.
Tampa Bay would even it up at 19:19 on their fourth power play of the frame. Brayden Point fired a cross-ice pass to Jake Guentzel, who centered to Nikita Kucherov. Kucherov went right back to Guentzel and he found the back of the net with Tarasov caught out of position.
After getting out-shot 18-5 in the first, the Cats came back out and quickly regained the lead, aided by an early cross-checking minor on Dominic James.
Brad Marchand sent the puck to Sam Bennett below the goal line and he fed back out to the right point to Seth Jones. Jones snapped off a rising wrist shot that struck Halverson, who was screened by Marchand, up high and tumbled into the cage at the 57-second mark.
It looked like the Panthers would head to the dressing room with the lead after a very long middle stanza, but after taking a cross from Evan Rodrigues, Luostarinen’s shot (or pass) was blocked by Raddysh, who sent the play the other way.
Kucherov’s pass on the 2-on-1 break caught Guentzel in the skates and then ended up on Point’s stick and he easily finished off the broken play at 18:55.
The Bolts started the third on a power play and cashed in at 1:05 when Kucherov steered Raddysh’s outlet pass to Guentzel, who blazed into open space on the right side and whipped a wrister past Tarasov.
Conor Geekie would put the Lightning up by two, with the assists going to James and Gage Goncalves, at 6:27.
Sam Reinhart came close to pulling the Panthers back within a goal, but hit the cross bar with Halverson scrambling to get back into position.
Anthony Cirelli tacked on another off a stretch play that saw Raddysh head-man to Declan Carlile, who sent Cirelli in alone on Tarasov with 4:49 left on the clock to complete the scoring.
The teams combined for 186 penalty minutes and 57 hits in what was an intense, bruising affair especially for a preseason game. Tampa Bay wanted put on a show for their fans and with two power-play markers and a big three-goal third period, they did just that.
Tarasov finished with 28 saves to keep his outplayed team in it until the Bolts turned it on in the third. Halverson stopped 16 of 18 shots faced for the home side.
The two teams will meet again Saturday in Sunrise to close out the exhibition slate.