Special, so special. Sam Reinhart opened and closed the scoring in the Florida Panthers impressive 4-2 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning that saw the visiting Cats score thrice on special teams at Amalie Arena.
After the teams traded chances, the Panthers would open the scoring on their second power play opportunity of the evening. Moving the puck from high to low, Aleksander Barkov passed to Matthew Tkachuk and he found a seam to feed back out to Aaron Ekblad. Ekblad one-timed the pass and Sam Reinhart was able to brush the puck past Andrei Vasilevskiy at the 15:51 mark of the first period.
Unfortunately, the Cats got outworked at the end of the frame and yielded at 19:55. The Lightning won the puck in the right corner and worked it up the boards to Darren Raddysh, who crossed to Victor Hedman. Hedman, who was likely looking shot before A.J. Greer took a tumble, found Nick Paul wide-open in front of Spencer Knight, and he sent the puck through his five-hole after the goalie desperately tried to adjust the back door pass.
After tilting the ice in their favor. Florida would break the game open midway through the second period, with Uvis Balinskis off serving an interference minor, by scoring twice on the same penalty kill.
First, Greer stripped Nikita Kucherov at the blue line and led a two-on-one rush up ice. Greer threaded a pass into the slot to Tomas Nosek and he was able to take the puck off his skate and get a shot on Vasilevskiy that was denied. Greer was able to get to the tantalizing rebound and just slip it past Vasilevskiy’s glove at 10:28.
Forty-two seconds later, Eetu Luostarinen dispossessed Anthony Cirelli of the puck at center ice and broke in on Vasilevskiy and cleanly beat him stick-side by roofing a perfectly-placed wrister. Eetu, Vasy!
The Lightning pulled one back 3:26 into third when Dmitry Kulikov got caught out of position and Jake Guentzel sprung Brayden Point into empty space down the left side. Point cut in front of Knight and easily deposited the puck behind him. Raddysh drew the second helper on Point’s 22nd of the season.
The Panthers shook off the goal and continued to clamp down on the Lightning and Reinhart eventually matched Point with his 22nd marker, scoring into an empty net to clinch it with 31 seconds left in regulation, with the assists going to Anton Lundell and Aleksander Barkov.
After an evenly played opening frame, the Panthers went to playoff mode and held the Lightning to 11 shots the rest of the way, making things relatively easy for Knight, who finished with 19 saves to collect his sixth win, and snap Tampa Bay’s four-game winning streak. The Panthers are back in first place going into tonight’s rematch at Amerant Bank Arena.
Nuts & Bolts
- By virtue of his brace, Sam Reinhart is tied for third place in the NHL in goals with Brayden Point and Kirill Kaprizov. That trio trails Leon Draisaitl (24) and William Nylander (23).
- Reinhart, Aaron Ekblad and Matthew Tkachuk each extended their respective point streaks to four games.
- Speaking of point streaks, the Cats brought Nikita Kucherov’s nine-gamer to an end, limiting him to two shots on goal. Kucherov racked up three goals and 20 points during his run.
- After going 25 games without a goal, Eetu Luostarinen has scored twice in the last three. Luostarinen’s shorty was his second game-winning goal of the season.
- Evan Rodrigues played in his 500th career NHL game. Rodrigues was his usual pesky self, finishing with one shots, four hits and four PIM.
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