The Florida Panthers finished its trip with a flourish by routing the Tampa Bay Lightning 9-2 to run its road winning streak to a mighty eleven games.
Tampa Bay opened the scoring 24 seconds in when Brandon Hagel took a backhand pass from Anthony Cirelli and broke in on Sergei Bobrovksy and scored five-hole.
The Panthers tied it at 7:01 after Sam Bennett won an offensive zone draw back to Brandon Montour and his shot struck the glove of Emil Martinsen Lilleberg and found the back of the net.
Bennett would notch a goal of his own 4:27 later by one-timing a Matthew Tkachuk pass past Andrei Vasilevskiy after Dmitry Kulikov was able to hold the puck in the zone.
After Josh Mahura rang the puck around the boards, Ryan Lomberg hacked it free to Kevin Stenlund and he fired through Vasilevskiy at 17:44 while cruising through the left circle.
Gustav Forsling would put the Cats up by three 44 seconds later when Vasilevskiy couldn’t glove his routine shot from the left boards because of a bit of incidental contact with Carter Verhaeghe’s stick.
The Panthers would score of both of its power play chances in the second period to grow the lead to 6-1.
The Lightning’s challenge of Forsling’s goal failed and Florida converted at the 23-second mark when Tkachuk’s centering attempt for Verhaeghe was poked in by defenseman Erik Cernak. Aleksander Barkov and Montour were credited with the assists.
Tyler Motte took a roughing minor 22 seconds later and the Panthers would only take 52 seconds to cash in. After playing catch with Montour, Verhaeghe shot for Tkachuk’s stick and he deftly deflected the puck home for his 20th goal.
After the Lightning failed multiple times to clear the zone, Tkachuk passed down low to Bennett and he crossed to Verghaeghe, who ripped the puck in along the ice from in close 1:05 into the third.
Bennett collected his second goal of the night 51 seconds later with Cernak in the sin box. Anton Lundell passed to Evan Rodrigues, who put the puck in the crease for Bennett, who chipped it upstairs over former Panther Jonas Johansson.
Verhaeghe bagged his 30th goal of the season at the 4:09 mark, easily finishing off a juicy rebound after Johansson came out to stop Forsling’s shot off a set up by Sam Reinhart.
Brayden Point would get loose for a meaningless power-play goal at 10:51 to complete the scoring, with the assists going to Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman.
A bevy of players were handed misconducts as the time ran out on Florida’s league-leading 20th road win.
What a night! Everything went right for the Panthers, who were clearly the better team, while the Lightning, who had won eight-straight on home ice were a complete disaster.