Down 5-2 late in the third, the Florida Panthers got goals from Carter Verhaeghe and Evan Rodrigues to pull within a one before Matthew Tkachuk hit the post on shorthanded breakaway and Kyle Connor scored his second of the game into an empty net to give the Winnipeg Jets a 6-4 victory.
Despite coming within a whisker of tying the game, the Cats didn’t really deserve a point in this one as Winnipeg repearedly outworked Florida’s patchwork defense down low to set up high quality chances that Sergei Bobrovsky wasn’t able to answer enough.
Mark Scheifele opened the scoring 3:30 into the first by taking a pass from Connor and knifing his way through Niko Mikkola and Kevin Stenlund before beating Bobrovsky. Josh Morrissey drew the second assist on the power-play goal. Gustav Forsling was off for holding Gabe Vilardi.
Florida got its first goal of the season on the power play as well. After taking a short dish from Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk crossed back to the opposite point to Rodrigues, who sent a perfect pass down low for Sam Reinhart to tap home at 17:03. Beauty!
The Panthers would take the lead 25 ticks into the second period. Barkov tracked down a crossing pass from Verhaeghe and fed back to Kulikov at the point. Kulikov let go of a rising shot that Hellebuyck couldn’t handle and Rodrigues was there to convert the rebound.
Florida followed up the goal with a terrible shift that allowed Winnipeg to counter just ten seconds later. After winning the faceoff at center, Scheifele outraced Mackie Samoskevich to Vilardi’s dump-in, rounded the net and found Connor, who was left open in the slot by Kulikov, and he ripped the puck past Bobrovksy.
The Jets took the lead back at 8:20 on a sequence that saw Ramus Kupari collect Mason Appleton’s dump-in by lifting Josh Mahura’s stick. Kupari worked his way around the net and threw the puck on goal. Bobrovsky made the save, but the rebound came right to Murray Barron, who scored after he had just gotten up from plowing into Mahura and Nick Cousins after being pushed by Steven Lorentz.
Winnipeg quickly doubled its advantage at 9:55 when Cole Perfetti set up Dylan DeMelo for a perfectly placed wrist shot from above the circles after Nino Niederreiter won the puck on the opposite side boards.
Appleton’s shorthanded goal made it 5-2 with 5:43 remaining in regulation. After losing his stick, Adam Lowry kicked the puck ahead to himself while coming out of the defensive zone zone, and Morrissey handed his stick to him from the bench, allowing Lowry to center Appleton on a 2-on-1. Bovbrovsky got a piece of the shot, but not enough to keep it from crossing the goal line.
Verhaeghe notched his first of the campaign at 16:31 after Rodrigues sent the puck around the boards to Tkachuk, who fired a hard shot on Hellebuyck that resulting in a juicy rebound.
With Bobrovsky off for an extra attacker, Rodrigues handed off to Reinhart in the neutral zone and headed to the net where he deflected in Barkov’s bullet wrister from just above the left circle after Reinhart’s cross.
A holding call on Kulikov looked to snuff out any chance the Cats had at coming all the back, except it didn’t. Reinhart sent Tkachuk away on breakaway and he had Hellebuyck beat, but his shot hit right post instead of finding twine.
Soon after, Morrissey would find Connor and he would find the back of the empty net from just above the blue line at 18:50 to send the Panthers to an 0-2 start.
Next stop, New Jersey (gulp!)