Panthers lose first in regulation

In Sunrise on Sunday afternoon, the Florida Panthers took their first regulation loss of the season, 4-1 at the hands of the Detroit Red Wings.

Thomas Greiss made 36 saves in his first win of the season.

“I thought we competed extremely hard,” Detroit head coach Jeff Blashill said. “I thought we were committed to trying to play the right way. We weren’t perfect; we gave up chances and when we gave up chances, I thought Greiss was great.

“In this league, you’ve got to have really good goaltending to win and you got to play the right way and I thought we did that.”

Alex Wennberg was the lone Panthers player to break through for a goal.

“They’re a good team,” the Panthers’ Jonathan Huberdeau said. “They work hard. Greiss was really good tonight, but we had some chances. He stopped a lot of pucks.

“I think they deserved it a little bit more than us. I think we’ve got to forget about it, our first loss in regulation, and come back and be ready for the next one.”

Marc Staal, Robby Fabbri and Givani Smith were the Detroit strikers.“You need results to build confidence,” Blashill said. “I talk about process lots, but I talked about this today, ultimately you need results to build confidence. Getting the result today is huge, and I think we played the type of game we’ve got to play to be successful. We competed really, really hard and we defended and checked well. Those are the things we’re going to have to do to be successful, and I also think we got to their net.

“We scored goals because we were hard at their net. Ultimately all the goals are scored around the net and we did a good job there and then you get the timely goaltending.”

Vladislav Namestnikov added an empty-net goal to ice the win for Detroit.

Chris Driedger made 35 saves in the loss.

“We had a 3-on-1 with all the right guys on the ice with it, and the next thing you know it’s 3-1 instead of 2-2,” Panthers head coach Joel Quenneville said. “That was a turning point for us in the game. Driedger gave us a chance. Obviously, we didn’t press enough there at the end.”