Panthers get past Lightning, 5-3

In Tampa, the visiting Florida Panthers got back at the Lightning on Saturday, with a 5-3 win.

Sergei Bobrovsky made 28 saves in the victory.

Florida newcomers

Sam Bennett (two assists) and Brandon Montour (goal) contributed to the Panthers win.

“That was a lot of fun,” Bennett said. “We’ve got a really good team here and a great group of guys. It feels good to get a win in my first game.”

Montour gave the Panthers a 1-0 lead with his strike.

“He moves well, he moves with the puck, I like him,” Florida’s Markus Nutivaara said. “He’s going to keep getting better too.”

Patric Hornqvist pushed the lead to 2-0 before Brayden Point scored to make it 2-1.

“We turned it over, and like a lot of times when pucks end up in the net when you turn it over bad things can happen,” Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said. “That was a tough one.”

Jonathan Huberdeau restored the two-goal lead for the Panthers before the end of the first period..

“I was so excited to play with those guys,” Bennett said. “They’re so talented, so skilled. I don’t think I realized how good they are until I started playing with them and we started to build up a little chemistry. It was a lot of fun playing with them.”

After Frank Vatrano  extended the lead to 4-1, Tampa’s  Erik Cernak and Mathieu Joseph  scored to cut the lead to 4-3.

“You just can’t step away from your structure and the things you need to do,” Cernak said. “We were much better in the [defensive zone] and we were doing the right things in our zone. We just have to continue to keep doing that.”

Anthony Duclair added an empty-net goal for the 5-3 final. Andrei Vasilevskiy made 27 saves in the loss, his first on home ice this season.

“We had a lot of puck possession tonight, I just don’t know how much we generated,” Cooper said. “Did we take a step forward? I thought we played better tonight than we did the other night when we won. But it was tough because we just shot ourselves in the foot.”