In Sunrise, Spencer Knight made 37 saves and the Florida Panthers downed the Boston Bruins, 5-2, on Wednesday to end the Bruins win streak at seven.
“Every goalie likes to feel a lot of pucks,” Knight said. “But I’ve learned how to play in all situations, whether I’m facing one shot a period or 20. It doesn’t really matter at this point. It gets you into the game, but at the same time, I mean, every team is so good and you can’t be comfortable.”
Charlie McAvoy and David Pastrnak were the Bruins strikers, both goals came off the power play.
The Panthers were 3-for-7 on the power play, Boston scored twice in six chances.
The Bruins dropped to 17-3-0.
“We were pretty dominant in the first,” Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said. “And then the second, the other part of our game that needs to be better is turnovers. We made too many turnovers at the offensive blue line that didn’t allow us to get to our game.”
San Reinhart scored in the first period to give the Panthers an early 1-0 lead.
“I think it built over the course of the game,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “We were better [in the] second and third period, for sure. [Boston’s] a dangerous team, playing with a tremendous amount of confidence. … Spencer Knight was really strong in the first period, and you get that good feeling by your goaltender, and I think we really fed off that.”
McAvoy tied it, 1-1, headed to the middle frame.
“I was concerned about the start because Florida always starts really well,” Montgomery said. “Oddly enough, I thought our start was really good. We took that penalty and that kind of took away from some things.”
In the second period, Anton Lundell made it 2-1 for the Panthers.
Alexander Barkov scored off the power play for a 3-1 lead to the Panthers.
“We haven’t been winning [as many] games as we want to,” Barkov said. “At the same time, I think it’s about building the game, and feeling more and more comfortable on the ice and later in the season. … Right now, especially, we need to win some games, and against Boston, it was [a] huge one.”
Matthew Tkachuk scored with 14 seconds left in the frame for a 4-1 advantage.
“[Tkachuk’s] got one of those unusual set of hands that within two or three feet of the net, he gets a stick on everything,” Maurice said.
Boston got one back off the power play strike from Pastrnak to make it 4-2, but Aaron Ekblad added an empty-net goal for the 5-2 final.
“Being here in front of our fans makes a huge difference for us,” Ekblad said. “We’ve kind of been snake-bitten recently, haven’t gotten the wins we really wanted and really felt like we deserved, so tonight’s a good quality effort from everybody and we got that result.”
Jeremy Swayman made 24 saves in the Boston loss.
“They’re a good team, high offensive power,” Swayman said. “Obviously, I was wanting to make some saves in a timely [manner], but they definitely capitalized, so want to learn from that and definitely take the positives and move forward.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.