In Sunrise Thursday night, the Florida Panthers built a 3-0 lead through two periods of play and then hug for a 3-2 win after the Philadelphia Flyers rallied for two goals in the final frame.
“We got to continue to fight and claw and get back in this thing so we can start putting teams behind us,” said Derek MacKenzie who had a goal for the Panthers.
Jonathan Huberdeau and Jared McCann also scored for Florida as they have now own 
four straight.
“It’s just going in right now,” Huberdeau said. “Our line, we’re playing better. It’s much more fun when we’re in the offensive zone than we’re defending. That’s good. We’ve just got to keep shooting the puck on net and get rewarded.”
Scott Laughton and Sean Couturier scored for the Flyers.
“We didn’t play very well,” the Flyers’ Claude Giroux said. “We shot ourselves in the foot a lot and that’s frustrating especially where we are in the standings. If we want to catch up to teams, games like this can’t happen.”
James Reimer made 29 saves to pick up the win.
The Panthers improved to 16-16-5 with the win.
“It’s nice to get back to .500, but we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. We’re just looking to stay in striking distance and keep trying to climb over teams in the standings. That’s our main focus. It’s four (in a row), be happy about it now, but we want to make it five, we want to keep it rolling,” Panthers head coach Bob Boughner said after the narrow win.
Philadelphia dropped to 15-14-8 with the loss.
“We didn’t quite play our game all the way through. We weren’t there tonight and we didn’t deserve to win,” the Flyers’ Michael Raffl said after the loss.
[WATCH:Â All Flyers vs. Panthers highlights]
Brian Elliott made 24 saves in the loss.
“I think our urgency was a little off coming into this one,” Elliott said. “They came at us hard and we really didn’t match it, until the last 10 minutes of the game, and that can’t happen.”
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