No Barkov? No Tkachuk? Not enough healthy players on the roster to dress 20 players?
No problem.
The Florida Panthers played with just 19 players on their active roster when they hosted the Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday.
Florida battled back from three deficits, pushing the game to overtime before Gus Forsling netted the winning goal with just 17 seconds left in overtime.
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Despite playing shorthanded, the Cats got off to a quick start on Vegas, as the Golden Knights didn’t register their first shot on goal until just past the 10-minute mark of the first period.
Late in the period, Vegas put a flurry of shots on Panthers goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, but he made several sparkling saves in short order, including a quick right pad rebound stop on Alexander Holtz.
They’d get one past Bob with just 33.3 left in the opening period off a bad turnover by Anton Lundell. He picked up the puck along the half boards, spun around and made a blind pass to the middle of Florida’s zone.
The puck was picked up by Nicolas Roy and he fed Tanner Pearson who wired a shot over Bobrovky’s blocker to give Vegas a 1-0 lead that they took into the first intermission.
It took Florida all of 69 seconds to the things up once the second period began.
Lundell had the puck along the half boards in Vegas’ zone and sent the puck across the zone, where Sam Reinhart played the bounce off the boards and one-timed the puck from a sharp angle past a surprised Ilya Samsonov.
Vegas reclaimed the lead with 5:44 left in the period on a quick shot from the boards that Bobrovsky didn’t seem to pick up until the very last moment.
The puck deflected off Keegan Kolesar on its way through Bobrovsky’s legs, his first goal of the season for the visitors.
A slashing call on Roy at the 18:14 mark gave the Cats a late period power play, and they cashed in with 39.1 seconds to go thanks to a great pass from Carter Verhaeghe to a steaking Sam Bennett at the back door.
Samsonov came up with several big saves during the first half of the third period to keep the game knotted at two. Vegas’ first shot of the period came at the 7:30 mark, and it was a Brett Howden goal to give the Golden Knights a 3-2 lead.
An offensive zone draw for the Panthers led to the game-tying goal about five minutes later.
Reinhart won the right side draw and went to the net, tapping a missed shot across the crease to Eetu Luostarinen, who popped the puck into the yawning cage.
An extremely entertaining overtime session appeared destined to end without a goal being scored, but a late rush by Reinhart and Bennett ended with the puck on Gus Forsling’s stick and a wide-open net in front of him.
Game, Panthers.
On to the Wild.
QUICK THOUGHTS
Florida is now 3-0-1 over their past four games, all without Barkov and Tkachuk
Reinhart is now up to five goals and 12 points in Florida’s first seven games of the season.
Lundell has logged multi-point outings in three of his past four games, racking up four goals and seven points during the run.
Florida has scored power play goals in consecutive games for the first time this season.
Verhaeghe put up a season-high six shots on 18 shot attempts.
Bennett now has two power play goals this season.
The Panthers killed off Vegas’ only power play, extending their consecutive penalties killed streak to 14 in a row. They’ve killed 17-of-19 on the season.
Luostarinen has now scored twice over his past three games.
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