In Sunrise, it did not go well for the Florida Panthers.
On Tuesday night, the Panthers lost their second straight game on home ice and trail the Tampa Bay Lightning 2-0 in their round one series.
“We’ve been here before,” Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said. “If you want to have a long run and give yourself a chance, there are going to be times that we have to win the 5-4 game and there’s going to be times you have to win the 2-1 game. We’ve been here before and I thought the guys did a great job just shutting it down.”
Steve Stamkos and Ondrej Palat scored in the first period to give the Lightning a 2-0 lead.
“It was a good feeling,” Tampa Bay’s Ryan McDonagh said. “You want to play with the lead. It allows us to just play high percentage and you don’t have to force things or chase the game. I thought we did a good job continuing to create things. Even when you have the lead there, you don’t want to just sit back completely and give up a lot of ice. Our group feels confident in those situations.”
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 32 saves to get the win.
“He was outstanding,” Stamkos said. “We know he’s the best goalie in the world; he showed it tonight. He’s our rock back there and he was outstanding tonight and a big part of our win.”
Mason Marchment scored the Panthers only goal in the middle frame.
“It had the pace of the last game particularly early and then they scored, and they scored after that,” Panthers head coach Joel Quenneville said. “Then they had the lead they were looking for, so it was more patient of a game and a lot more structured of a game. We fought back, had a good later part of the second and were in the right spot. We couldn’t buy the goal we were looking for.”
The Lightning head home to Tampa for Game 3 on Thursday night.
Yanni Gourde s iced the win with a late third period strike into an empty net.
“We moved better in the offensive zone [in Game 1] and we created chances in the offensive zone more than we did today,” the Panthers’ Aleksander Barkov said. “But sometimes it’s gonna be like this and we just have to find a way. It doesn’t matter how you win, you’ve just got to win.”
Chris Driedger made 26 saves in the loss.
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