In Vancouver, the Florida Panthers scored three goals in 59 seconds in the first period, on Thursday night.
The three-goal barrage started at 18:14 of the first.
Matthew Tkachuk, Gustav Forsling, and Ryan Lomberg were the Panthers strikers.
“Everybody stepped up,” Tkachuk said. “Everybody contributed, but three different lines scoring after the first just really set up our night.”
Florida improved to 11-9-4.
“It was great,” Lomberg said. “We needed this one, so I thought besides the goals we did a lot of good things for the majority of that game.”
Spencer Knight made 32 save in the Panthers win.
“They play off each other,” coach Paul Maurice said of Tkachuk and Bennett. “I think Sam’s got so much quickness in straight lines, he pulls people off, and Matthew can just wait a puck out. He can hold on to a puck and find a hole. They’ve been really good together and that’s why we kept them together.”
The Canucks dropped to 9-12-3.
“How we can play so good in one week and then so bad the next week, it’s pretty mind-boggling,” coach Bruce Boudreau said. “It’s just hard to understand.”
Dakota Joshua was the lone striker for the Canucks.
Sam Bennett hit for a double for Florida.
“We’ve gotten off to pretty good leads in the last few weeks, but I thought we did a great job of not just holding on to it, but building off it,” Tkachuk said. “We didn’t sit back, we didn’t sit on a lead. They had their pushes in the second, they had it in the third, but we did a great job of kind of giving it right back to them in the sense of playing more in their zone, having more shots, more chances.”
Thatcher Demko got the start for Vancouver, he made 15 saves, but left the ice with 47 seconds left in the first period with an apparent injury.
Spencer Martin made 12 saves in relief
“We were being outplayed, sure, and then they scored the first goal and I’m sitting there going, ‘OK, let’s have a stopper shift in the next one,'” Boudreau said. “Then they score again, and it seems like we’re watching the play, going ‘What’s happening?’ And then they score the third one and leave poor [Demko] out to dry. It just seems like giveaway after giveaway after giveaway.”
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