Panthers rally falls short in 6-4 loss

In Sunrise, the Dallas Stars scored four times in the first period for a 4-0 lead over the Panthers on Thursday, and then held on for a 6-4 win.

Roope Hintz hit for a double in the win, his first goal came in the first period for a 1-0 Dallas lead.

“I think we started pretty well tonight,” Hintz said. “Then, of course, they came back. They played pretty well the second and early third. But we kept it. It feels good [to score], but the biggest thing was that we get the win.”

Scott Wedgewood made 21 saves before leaving the ice on a stretcher in late minutes of the second period.

“He’s not in any danger,” Dallas coach Peter DeBoer said. “He’s coherent, all that stuff. I don’t know if he’s fine. But I think he’s OK.”

Jake Oettinger made 19 saves in relief.

Dallas improved to 10-5-2.

“They put a lot of pressure on you,” DeBoer said. “If you can win some of those pinches, make some of those plays under pressure, you can create some of those odd-man rushes. I think that was our goal coming in and I thought we did that. We executed when we got the chances too, which is critical.”

Nils Lundkvist, Jamie Benn, and Tyler Seguin also scored in the opening period for the 4-0 advantage.

Florida dropped to 9-7-1.

“When you’re down 2-0, you’re going to come back out and play hard,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said. “But when you’re down four, to find that grit to come back, those are the things that over the year you get to keep a little bit. One, we haven’t had those starts, so that’s not our team. But how we handled it, very impressive. They fought back. It was a tough night for us, but they didn’t quit at all.”

The Panthers got a power play goal from Carter Verhaeghe in the second period to make it 4*1, but Hintz scored his second for a 5-1 lead to Dallas.

Eetu Luostarinen and Sam Reinhart scored for the Panthers in the middle frame to get within 5-3 head to the third.

“I don’t think there was anything good in the first period,” Bennett said. “We got outcompeted, outskated, we really left [Bobrovsky] out to dry in the first period. It’s tough to do that because he’s been so good for us. It was a horrible first period. It’s a tough league to be able to come back from four goals.”

Matthew Tkachuk got one more back for the Panthers to make it 5-4 in the 14th minute of the third period.

“It wasn’t exactly how we wanted to draw it up,” DeBoer said. “That’s a tough lead to play with, and then with the goalie going down … we got on our heels. We bent but we didn’t break. There wasn’t any panic. I thought we had good composure.”

Ty Dellandrea e sealed the win for the Stars with an empty-net goal with 18 seconds left in the game for the 6-4 final.