In Washington, DC, the Florida Panthers scored two empty net goals in the final 81 seconds of their match with the Capitals on Thursday to put an end to any rally Washington might have considered n a 6-3 win.
“You want to get back on your horse, and we were cooking right out of the gate,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said. “Got off to a lead, which was good for us in a lot of ways. Mentally, you get to put the last game behind you and focus on tonight.”
Anton Lundell scored and Sam Reinhart hit for the two goals to zeal the win for the Panthers.
Sergei Bobrovsky made 28 saves in the Panthers win.
Florida improved to 28-24-6
The Panthers had taken a 4-1 lead into the third period, but the Caps rallied with two goals earlier in the third to close the gap to 4-3.
Nicklas Backstrom hit for a power-play goal at 13:04 to make it 4-2, and Evgeny Kuznetsov scored a second power play marker at 17:28 to make it 4-3.
“We just got to get together as a team and chip in for each other and make sure we keep grinding,” Backstrom said. “You’ve got to learn from every loss, so hopefully we’re going to learn from this and move on.”
The Panthers took a 2-0 lead in the game on a first period goal from Gustav Forsling for a 1-0 advantage, and a second period strike from Marc Staal, his first goal of the campaign, to give the Panthers a 2-0 lead.
“It felt good,” Staal said. “I’m not that stressed about it, I don’t really think about it, but the boys were pretty pumped up for me, so it was nice to get. Nice to get one and get the momentum going for us.”
The Capitals dropped to 28-23-6.
“The second period, for me, could’ve been better and we’ve got to do more. It’s not good enough. We’ve got to have better execution,” Capitals coach Peter Laviolette said. “There’s passes out there that need to be made and there’s physicality that can be found somewhere and the puck battles and the things that we can do better, we have to do them better.”
Florida’s Colin White pushed the lead to 3-0 at 7:20 of the middle stanza.
“We slowed it down and watched it a whole bunch of times. His head never checks his shoulder,” Maurice said. “But he’s done that too many times to ever call it lucky. It was incredible. Huge goal for us. To go in with a three-goal cushion instead of two is important.”
Washington got on the board at 15:51 of the second off a marker from Dylan Strome to make it 3-1 to the Panthers.
“I think we know what it takes to be successful. I think we just haven’t played that way in a couple games here,” Strome said. “So, [we’ve got to] get back to that and come together as a team and really figure out a way to get these points.”
Florida replied with a goal from Aleksander Barkov on a 2-on-1 rush.
Darcy Kuemper made 30 saves in the Caps loss.
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