In Sunrise, the Florida Panthers outscored the Tampa Bay Lightning, 3-1, in each period en route to a 9-3 shelling of the Bolts on Thursday night.
Spencer Knight made 39 saves in the Florida win.
Anthony Duclair hit for a pair of goals in the Florida win.
“We saw that they were a little bit of a different team than usual,” the Panthers’ Aleksander Barkov said. “But it didn’t affect our preparation for the game or mindset or anything. We wanted to come out hard and we got a good start. We probably didn’t play our best game overall, but if you score nine goals in a game you’re probably going to win.”
The Panthers improved to 20-7-4.
The Panthers took a 3-0 lead in the opening frame off goals from Duclair, Jonathan Huberdeau, and Frank Vatrano.
“We gave up too many chances to a really good team that wanted to beat us,” Tampa Bay head coach Jon Cooper said. “A team that we’ve handled and beat in the playoffs. They haven’t forgotten, and after tonight I won’t forget this.”
Zach Bogosian scored for Tampa in the first to cut the lead to 3-1.
“They deserved what they got and we probably helped them along in that process,” Cooper said. “Don’t look at our lineup and say, ‘Well that’s a victim of circumstances.’ We put ourselves in that position.”
Eetu Luostarinen scored for the Panthers in the middle stanza for a 4-1 lead, Steve Stamkos cut the deficit to two goals with a strike.
Maxim Mamin and Anton Lundell closed out the second period with goals for a 6-2 lead after 40 minutes.
“We needed a couple of games at home like this,” Huberdeau said. “Obviously they were missing key players on the other side, but we focused on our team. We played a [heck] of a game and it’s good for us to win a back-to-back at home.”
Tampa opened the third period with a goal from Brayden Point, but that just seemed to amp up the Panthers who finished the game with three straight goals from Duclair, Aaron Ekblad, and Barkov (shorthanded) for the 9-3 final.
“We just wanted to keep going from where we finished yesterday,” Lundell said. “Right away from the start we wanted to show the way. It’s always a good game against the Lightning. They are a good team and it’s a hard battle. So we were prepared and we just played as a team.”
“We have a standard, we’ve set it, we have a process we go through,” Cooper said. “It’s taken time in this organization to build it and tonight we did not exercise it.”
Maxime Lagace made 21 saves through two periods of play, he got the hook in the second intermission.
Hugo Alnefelt made seven saves in the third period.
“It’s small details and mistakes here and there that cost us early,” the Lightning’s Mathieu Joseph said. “We were never able to come back in the game.”
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