In Sunrise, Aaron Ekblad scored two third period goals to rally the Florida Panthers to a tie and force overtime with the Pittsburgh Penguins.
“Crazy game, pretty wild,” Ekblad said. “Resilient team. I only say ‘Comeback Cats’ because we’ve done it quite a few times in the last few years. We live on that mantra.”
Carter Verhaeghe scored his second goal of the game in extra time to give the Panthers a 5-4 win over the Penguins on Thursday night.
“It wasn’t the way we kind of drew it up, but we’ll take the win,” Verhaeghe said. “We’ve got a lot of things to work on still. It’s the first game. So we’ll take the two points and move on.”
Sergie Bobrovsky made 43 saves for the win in the Florida season opener.
Jeff Carter and Jake Guentzel had goals for the Pens, who held a 4-2 lead until Ekblad’s heroics.
“To get three out of four points against two really good hockey teams, for me, we should take that as a positive,” Pittsburgh head coach Mike Sullivan said. “We know we can be better. There’s areas, without a doubt, where we can improve. … I just thought our guys competed hard. That’s a positive sign.”
Pittsburgh rallied from early 0-2 deficit when the Panthers got goals from Verhaeghe and Anthony Duclair.
Danton Heinen and Evan Rodrigues also scored for Pittsburgh.
Florida was whistled for five penalties i the middle frame.
“We certainly changed the complexion there in that second period,” Florida head coach Joel Quenneville said. “You lose all momentum of a game and controlling what we’re looking to do. They scored a couple power-play goals. Now, they’re in the game and all of a sudden, we’re down 4-2 and it doesn’t look good.”
Casey DeSmith made 34 saves in the Pittsburgh loss.
You must be logged in to post a comment.