The power of Sam Reinhart and goaltending of Sergei Bobrovsky compelled the Florida Panthers to a 4-3 win over the New Jersey Devils in the final game of a season-opening, three-game road trip at Prudential Center.
Reinhart scored twice, Bobrovsky made 31 saves and the Cats delivered a strong performance over the first two periods before fending off the Devils in the third to earn their first win of the young season.
Florida opened the scoring 3:54 into the game when Reinhart deflected Evan Rodrigues’ low shot between Vitek Vanecek’s pads. He didn’t receive an assist, but Aleksander Barkov started the play off with some strong work along the boards. The goal was the 200th of Reinhart’s NHL career.
Carter Verhaeghe made it 2-0 at the 13:12 when he reeled in a long, bouncing pass from Matthew Tkachuk that defenseman Brendan Smith whiffed on, and then a roofed a shot on the backhand with the puck standing on edge the whole time. Josh Mahura drew the secondary assist for his first point of the season.
The Cats would add on with the only goal of the middle frame. After Dmitry Kulikov made a nice play to first control and then move the puck up to Tkachuk after Verhaeghe’s pass hit him in the skate, the son of Keith whipped a back door pass across the goalmouth to Niko Mikkola, who notched his first as a Panther at the 11:18 mark.
Reinhart picked up his second of the night 59 seconds into the third on the power play, thanks in large part to a diving hold by Oliver Ekman-Larsson that kept the pressure on. Ekman-Larsson passed to Eetu Luostarinen, who quickly dished to Barkov, who went back to OEL. The defenseman moved to the middle before snapping off a wrister that Reinhart deflected home.
The goal proved huge because after that, the Cats took some penalties that allowed New Jersey to get back in the game.
With Mikkola off for cross-checking, Erik Haula got the Devils on the board at 3:35 when he deflected Jack Hughes’ long shot past Bobrovsky. The secondary assist went to Jesper Bratt.
After Alexander Holtz misfired on a prime scoring opportunity, the puck rattled off the boards to Haula, who drove a slapper at Bobrovsky from the right circle. Bobrovsky made the initial save, but the puck seeped out and Michael McLeod rapped it over the goal line to halve the deficit at 8:51 during a delayed penalty.
Nick Cousins trip of Luke Hughes gave New Jersey another power play and with Vanecek off for an extra attacker and Kevin Stenlund without a stick, Bratt took a pass from Dougie Hamilton, changed position, and snapped a shot over Bobrovsky’s glove from the right circle to pull the Devils within a goal with 2:23 left in regulation.
The Panthers survived another pull of Vanecek, raspberry to Verhaeghe for missing an empty net, to hold on for win number one of the 2023-24 campaign. somewhat salvaging the road trip which saw the team play well, but fail to solve Minnesota’s Filip Gustavsson and lay an egg in Winnipeg.
Fire & Brimstone
- Despite giving up three in third, the Panthers don’t win this one without a stellar performance from Sergei Bobrovksy. Bobrovsky picked up his 106th win with the Panthers, tying him with John Vanbiesbrouck for second-most in franchise history.
- Matthew Tkachuk was a stats machine, collecting two assists, a team-high five hits and four shots on goal. That’s back-to-back games with two helpers for Tkachuk.
- Florida finished the game with 20 blocked shots, including nine in the period.
- Nico Hischier didn’t register a shot, but he did go 15-for-20 on faceoffs and was credited with three hits in 19:09 TOI.
- Justin Sourdif had one shot on goal and dished out three hits in 10:00 of ice time in his NHL debut.