In Sunrise, the St Louis Blues scored three goals in the third period to force extra time with the Panthers on Saturday.
Jordan Kyrou, who scored one of those three markers, hit for the game-winner in the extra session for a5-4 St Louis win.
“We made eye contact and that’s just something that we’ve been working on for a while,” St Louis’ Tory Krug said. “I’ve iced a few pucks that we like to see end up on a stick, but luckily we connected on this one.”
Thomas Greiss made 33 saves in the Blues win.
St Louis improved to 11-10-0.
“I thought we did a very good job in the first two and in the third we made errors that are not usual for us, and it cost us,” Florida defenseman Rakdo Gudas said. “The biggest thing is to learn from it and forget it, remember the mistake and forget about the loss. It is going to happen. We can’t always be the team that comes back. Sometimes that is going to bite you.”
Florida dropped to 10-8-3.
The Panthers built a 3-0 lead early in the first period. Aaron Ekblad got the game going with a 1-0 lead to the Panthers.
Rakdo Gudas and Carter Verhaeghe added two markers to the lead for a 3-0 advantage.
“I thought we did a very good job in the first two and in the third we made errors that are not usual for us, and it cost us,” Gudas said. “The biggest thing is to learn from it and forget it, remember the mistake and forget about the loss. It is going to happen. We can’t always be the team that comes back. Sometimes that is going to bite you.”
Brandon Saad put an end to the string with a goal late in the first to make 3-1 headed to the middle frame.
“You have to skate and you have to make plays. You can’t sit on anything,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “Maybe even to the 10-minute mark (of the third period) we were fine, then they made a push and we did not handle it well. … When it got to 4-2, you could feel us back off and not be confident or direct with the puck. You can’t play a tentative game.”
In the second period, Anton Lundell hit for a shorthanded goal for the Panthers to give them a 4-1 lead going into the third period.
The Blues third period rally was centered on strikes from Ryan O’Reilly, Kyrou and Vladimir Tarasenko.
“Great comeback win,” St. Louis coach Craig Berube said. “Guys really pulled it together. We didn’t have the start we wanted for sure, but the second period we settled in a little bit more but still didn’t play the right kind of hockey we needed to play to be successful, but we did in the third. So that’s good on the guys.”
Spencer Knight made 32 saves in the Panthers loss.
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