The three-game sweep of the NHL starts in Sunrise, Florida where the Panthers picked up a strong, 1-0, win over the visiting Tampa Bay Lightning.
Aaron Ekblad scored with 20 seconds left in regulation to get the Cats the win.
“Lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky,” Ekblad said. “Good screens in front and just lucky. Can’t say anything else. One little stick-handle out to the side, my hands were pretty high up on the stick, and I just kind of lobbed it in there and hoped for the best.”
Lucky or not the goal counted for the win and the Bolts were stunned.
“Aaron Ekblad should buy a lottery ticket,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “He should send somebody to buy a lottery ticket in the last minute of the game.
“We’re thinking, let’s just get this to overtime and get a point and see what happens. We got hemmed in, but guys (are) in front of the net, and you’re thinking that thing’s not getting through at all. I don’t know who it hit, but clearly it hit somebody and bounced over. It’s a game of bounces, in a 0-0 game and they got the one they needed.”
Roberto Luongo made 39 saves for the win.
Roberto Luongo – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
“It was better,” Luongo said. “I haven’t been too happy with the way I’ve been playing the last few games, so it’s nice to give the boys a good performance after they bailed me out on Saturday there.”
Andrei Vasilevskiy took the loss with 19 saves.
In Ottawa, Tomas Tatar scored in overtime to give the Detroit Red Wings a 4-3 win and help them escape a furious rally from the Senators in the third period that sent the game to the extra session.
“It should be easier than this,” Tatar said. “We can’t let it happen to let them come back and almost lose the two points.”
Dylan Larkin, Gustav Nyquist and Riley Sheahan also scored for the Wings.
“It was great to see,” Detroit’s Jimmy Howard said. “It’s been a while; I think that’s the second time this year we’ve gotten 30 shots on net. It was a great effort. That was the design in practice yesterday, was to get a lot of pucks on net. Petr [Mrazek] and I saw a lot of rubber in practice. It was good to see it transition over into the game tonight.”
Howard had 22 saves for the win.
“Our main concern tonight was a lack of physicality,” Senators coach Dave Cameron said. “Everything we did was skill-based. For our team to be successful, sometimes you’ve got to bring the game into the trenches. You’ve got to block shots; you’ve got to win your battles on the wall. We’re trying to do it stick-checking and finessing it in. That don’t work in this league.”
In Montreal, David Desharnais’s goal in extra time capped a rally by the Canadiens who erased a 0-3 deficit to win 4-3 over the Vancouver Canucks.
“I enjoy playing hockey,” said PK Subban, who set up the game-winner. “It’s fun to play the game, whether it’s 3-on-3 or 4-on-4, you know in that moment you have an opportunity to take that one shot, one bounce to win it. You want to be on the right side of it. I like 3-on-3 when we win.”
The Canucks were not feeling as pleased with the overtime format.
“There’s [no margin for error]. It’s crazy, it doesn’t feel like hockey,” said Canucks forward Chris Higgins. “It feels like summertime. I personally don’t like it, but chances definitely come out of nothing.”
The Canucks built their 3-0 lead on goals from Adam Cracknell, Jared McCann and Daniel Sedin.
“It just seems that we’re getting caught,” Vancouver coach Willie Desjardins said. “We had a great chance, we missed the net, and it went around the other way, they got a 3-on-2 out of it. We score on that other one, we’re all happy, but we didn’t so we’re certainly disappointed again.”
Tomas Fleischmann, Lars Eller and Max Pacioretty scored for the Habs in regulation.
“We felt pretty confident about our game tonight,” said Fleischmann, who played his 600th game. “The last two periods I would say we were pretty hard-working against them and we had a lot of shots. We were thinking we might score earlier, but it came with three minutes left in the game. Good thing it happened.”
Fleischmann tied it three with just over three minutes left in the game.
“To me this was a character win,” Canadiens coach Michel Therrien said. “It’s rare you can come back from a three-goal deficit, and the players were able to make that comeback happen.”
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