In Denver, the Panthers’ Matthew Tkachuk’s second goal of the game snapped a 4-4 tie in the third period with the Avalanche on Tuesday night to give Florida a 5-4 win.
Florida held 3-0 and 4-1 leads in the game before the Avs rallied with three goals to tie it 4-4.
“It’s huge. Wouldn’t expect it from anyone else,” Florida forward Sam Bennett said of Tkachuk. “He’s scored big goals for us all year, and there’s just another one.”
Sergei Bobrovsky made 27 saves in the Panthers’ win.
“I thought we built really well through two [periods]. They had some zone time on us early in the third, [but] I didn’t think it was particularly dangerous,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said. “Didn’t like the two that we gave up, but the next shift out was hard. [Nick] Cousins in on the forecheck, and we kind of righted the ship a little bit after that. Big power-play goal at the end.
“We’ve just had a whole bunch of games this year, to be honest with you, that I don’t think it was a particularly-just result. I’m happy. I’m happy for them. They battled for it.”
Florida moved to 19-19-4.
The Panthers took a 2-0 lead in the first period on markers from Aleksander Barkov and Brandon Montour
“‘Benny’ came back, back-checked pretty good, made a good play in our own end,” Montour said. Me and [Marc Staal] both jumped in there. Saw an odd man rush, and Carter [Verhaeghe] gave it to me in the slot and it’s nice to get that one.”
The Avs dropped to 20-16-3.
“We didn’t play well enough for 40 minutes, in my opinion. It’s just not good enough,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “I think we get some shooting luck and more intensity to our game in our third and it starts to turn around for us, but it wasn’t there. Didn’t manage the puck good in the first. Didn’t like the way we checked in the second.”
Sam Bennett pushed the advantage to 3-0 off a power play goal.
“I think we did all the right things. We came out flying,” Bennett said. “[Bobrovsky] made some huge saves for us, and we were doing everything right. So, that’s about as good of a start to the game as we can have.”
The Avs cut it to 3- with 54 seconds left in the first on strike from Andrew Cogliano.
Tkachuk’s first of the game came in the middle frame to push the Panthers’ lead back to three at 4-1.
Mikko Rantanen, Nathan MacKinnon, and JT Compher rallied the Avs back to a 4-4 tie.
“The first period, [we] gave up three goals right away. It’s tough to come back, [but] we did,” Rantanen said. “It [stinks], the end there. Their goal, we almost got a kill and then 10 seconds left, they score.”
Tkachuk ended that rally with his winner in the third.
“I thought we did a good job of composing ourselves. They came at us hard,” Bennett said. “They capitalized, and then we did a good job of resetting, refocusing, and just going out there and playing. And Tkachuk got the job done.”
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Alexandar Georgiev made 32 saves in the Avs loss.
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