On Saturday night, the Tampa Bay Lightning reasserted their offense and scored four goals in the second period to ice the Florida Panthers, 6-1, in Sunrise.
Tyler Johnson struck for two goals.
“I think last game we just really weren’t ready to play,” Johnson said. “They took it to us. Credit to them, they played a great game but definitely wasn’t our best. We talked about after that that we needed a lot more. We had a good practice [Friday] and were able to kind of put it to the ice today and the guys played well.”
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 33 saves in the win.
“We just didn’t come to play tonight for the full 60 minutes,” the Panthers’ MacKenzie Weegar said. “We were in there for a bit, then the second period came. They just kept taking it to us. We were expecting a big push, and they’re the Stanley Cup champions for a reason. We just weren’t ready for it. Plain and simple, we didn’t have the compete tonight. We look for a big bounce-back the next game.”
Frank Vatrano had the only Panthers’ goal in the loss.
Ondrej Palat and Mathieu Joseph scored to give the Bolts a 2-0 lead before Johnson added his two to the mix.
“We’ve got some key players out of the lineup that take up a lot of minutes, and guys have to step into their spots, and I thought the guys did an exceptional job,” Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said. “Guys were moved up the lineup and they delivered. We need depth to be able to weather the storm and those guys did just that, and it’s the reason why we won.”
Alexander Volkov and Barclay Goodrow closed out the scoring after the Panthers had ruined the shutout bid.
“It was huge,” Cooper said. “And just the way we did it too. I don’t think they had anything brewing for three quarters of it, and then one stretch we got out there we’re a little tired. But to get us through that, we didn’t want to be chasing the game again, and when we did break down (Vasilevskiy) was there. But that was a huge kill.”
Sergei Bobrovsky made 22 saves in the loss.
“I think we lost our composure,” Panthers coach Joel Quenneville said. “We had a decent start to the game and had a couple of power-play looks. But the game got away from us at that point. I think we lost our composure not doing what was successful in the first game. They were a hungrier team.”
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