It was a fun Saturday night at the hockey barn in Sunrise.
Well, for the home team and their fans, at least.
The Florida Panthers welcomed the Philadelphia Flyers to Amerant Bank Arena and picked up a tough two points, winning in a shootout 4-3.
The Flyers jumped on top of Florida early, scoring the opening goal less than five minutes in and recording the game’s first four shots on goal.
It took the Panthers about half the opening period before they appeared to get their skates under them and skate with some momentum.
Florida didn’t get on the scoreboard until the 5:32 mark of the middle frame, when defenseman Nate Schmidt wound up and bombed a clapper from a few feet inside the blue line that beat Samuel Ersson over his glove.
The Panthers took a 2-1 lead midway through the period on a nice give-n-go between Dmitry Kulikov and Evan Rodrigues.
Kulikov found himself all alone with the puck in the high slot and wired a wrist shot over Ersson’s blocker to give the Cats their first lead of the night.
Unfortunately for Kulikov, a delayed penalty called on him would lead to the Flyers tying goal. As Philly played with six skates on the delayed call, Anthony Richard fired a shot from the point that beat Bob, who may have been screened by Kulikov.
Less than two minutes later, Sam Bennett finished a gorgeous tic-tac-toe play by the Cats to give them the lead right back.
Matthew Tkachuk brought the puck into Philly’s zone before sending it to Niko Mikkola in the high slot. He twisted his body and kept the puck moving, finding Carter Verhaehge in the left circle, and Verhaeghe one-time-passed the puck to Bennett waiting on the back door with an open net.
The Flyers tied the game midway through the third when Garnet Hathaway’s backhand shot from inside the left circle squeaked through the legs of Sergei Bobrovsky and slowly slid across the goal line.
From there it was the goaltenders on both sides of the ice coming up big time and time again, pushing the game into overtime.
It was there that Bobrovsky turned things up a notch, making six OT saves, including four breakaway stops, to sent the game to Florida’s first shootout of the season.
A one-handed goal by Barkov and a nice forehand-backhand goal by Rodrigues, as well as another four saves by Bobrovsky, were enough to give Florida the all-important second point in the standings.
That’s seven straight wins for the Cats.
On to next week’s home back-to-back against the Devils.
QUICK THOUGHTS
Tkachuk played in his 600th NHL game.
Schmidt has points in consecutive games for the first time as a Panther.
Barkov extended his point streak to five games, logging 11 points since returning from his eight-game absence.
Speaking of streaks, Rodrigues has points in four straight (three goals and three assists) after going eight straight without finding the scoresheet.
Reinhart now has points in 13 games this season. Florida has played 15 games.
Bennett’s goal was his ninth of the season. He’s up to 15 points in 15 games.
Niko Mikkola has picked up an assist in four straight games and in six of his past seven.
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