In Sunrise, the Montreal Canadiens’ Max Domi‘s second goal of the game tied the match with the Florida Panthers at 3-3.
But Aleksander Barkov scored two of his three goals on the night to give the Panthers a 5-3 lead en route to a 6-3 win for the Panthers.
Aleksander Barkov had a hat trick in Panthers win over Habs – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
The game-winner was something of highlight reel goal.
“Those are nice goals,” Barkov said. “I think I’ve tried that like 17 times in my career; it worked [for] the first time, so I’m kind of happy. But more importantly, we got the two points.
“I’ve seen those [types of goals] in the YouTube and in highlights, and I was just dreaming about maybe one day I can score that kind of goal. It happened tonight, and of course I’m happy.”
Denis Malgin, Frank Vatrano and Riley Sheahan also scored for Florida.
“I liked our start, but after the first 10 minutes we looked at the score 3-1 and thought it was going to be easy,” Panthers coach Bob Boughner said. “That’s a team that’s fighting for their life. It was a good lesson to learn and we stayed composed the second period.”
Brendan Gallagher also scored for the Habs.
“Gotta be better,” Domi said. “Next game is absolutely huge. We’ve got to start winning some hockey games here. We know what we have to do.
“We’re going to stick together as a group. We’ve got confidence in one another. [If] we work hard and we push each other and hold each other accountable, we’ll be fine.”
[WATCH: All Canadiens vs. Panthers highlights]
Antti Niemi got the start but was dreadful early on and was given the hook after making just six saves off nine shots.
“It’s one of those nights where it happens to every goalie,” Canadiens coach Claude Julien said. “It’s tough. It was tough on him tonight early in the game. Sometimes those things just happen.
“It’s my job to make a decision, and I thought that by bringing (Price) back in, it would give us an opportunity to get back in the game, which we did. But we didn’t finish what we started.”
Carey Price finished the game and made 24 saves.
“We’re going through a tough time right now. I call it a slump and we’re fighting the puck and nothing seems to be smooth right now, so we’ve got to work on finding that. It’s as simple as that,” Julien added.
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