In Pittsburgh, the visiting Florida Panthers scored the first four goals of the middle frame on Wednesday en route to a 5-2 thumping of the Penguins,. 
Sergei Bobrovsky made 25 saves in the win.
The Panthers improved to 34-15-4.
Matthew Tkachuk hit for a goal and thee points in the win.
“His game, in some ways, isn’t any different than at the start when he wasn’t [scoring] except timing and a little bit of quickness,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said. “Some of that goes to our power play as well. He’s generated some offense there. I think they get confidence. Your star guys get a few points on the power play, it settles their 5-on-5 game.”
After a scoreless opening stanza, the Panthers broke on top with a pair of strikes 34 seconds apart.
Tkachuk scored first, at 4:28, for the 1-0 lead to the Panthers, and Jonah Gadjovich hit at 5:02 for the 2-0 advantage.
“A three-goal swing in a very, very short period of time, critically important,” Maurice said. “It’s such a dangerous team. … Their plus-10 [goal] differential, I think they’re the only team on the outside (of the Stanley Cup Playoffs) with that. They’re hard to play against.”
It felt like the Penguins were standing still.
“You get one disallowed and then they score two right off the top,” the Penguins’ Sidney Crosby said. “So that’s probably not what you’re looking for. But there’s a lot of time left to get back in the game and we were unable to do that.”
Aaron Ekblad hit off a power play at 8:27 for a 3-0 lead.
“When you get that lead like that, it’s never easy to keep it,” Ekblad said. “We did a really good job of being resilient and finding a way.”
Anton Lundell scored the first of his double o the night, at 13:02 to balloon the lead to 4-0.
The Penguins dropped to 23-20-7off their third straight loss.
“This one is a tough one for me to assess coming off the bench,” Pittsburgh coach Mike Sullivan said. “Usually, I’ve got a pretty good feel for how the game was played. I just think it wasn’t like we were under siege or anything. We just gave up some untimely goals.”
Bryan Rust got one back at 15:24 off a deflection to get the Pens on the board at 4-1.
“We’re spending way too much time [with] the puck on the boards instead of making tape-to-tape passes and breaking the puck out,” Rakell said. “It’s something that we’re going to keep working on. We know we have it in this room.”
Lundell collected his double at 5:35 of the third period for a 5-1 lead to the Panthers.
“You don’t see those goals that often,” Lundell said. “We had some luck with us. You take it.”
Pens rookie John Ludvig added a marker at 6:07 off a shot from the right circle, it was his first career NHL goal.
Tristan Jarry made 18 saves for
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