In Sunrise, the Panthers’ Eetu Luostarinen scored at 6:10 of the third period to snap a 1-1 tie with the Pittsburgh Penguins and help send Florida to a 3-1 win on Friday night.
Sergei Bobrovsky made 26 saves in the win.
“He was the difference,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “… It is a hard thing in the NHL to not be playing the game you want to be and be able to right it. “The first period was closer than I would want. … I didn’t care for our second period. We got very happy in the up-and-down, and that’s not a good recipe. But I think we fixed it.”
The Panthers improved to 16-8-2.
“We kept going at it, kept it simple,” The Panthers Oliver Ekman-Larsson said. “We were connected as a team in the third and, sometimes that is enough for one period. We’ll take it. [Bobrovsky] is a good goalie and is going to be there every time. He kept us in it in the first two periods, then made some key saves at the end.”
Reilly Smith was the lone striker for the Pens,his goal came at 8:05 of the middle frame for a 1-0 lead to Pittsburgh.
“Pittsburgh is very skillful; they have lots of skill up front and a lot of big names,” Bobrovsky said. “It was fun, it was a challenge. It wasn’t easy for us, but we stuck together. We chipped away and found a way to get two points against a really good team.”
The Penguins dropped to 11-12-3 off their fourth straight loss.
“I thought late in the game, it was good,” the Penguins’ Sidney Crosby said. “We had a couple of good looks around the net, so hopefully we can build off that.
“… We gave ourselves a chance, and you’ve got to do that every night. It doesn’t guarantee anything, but I thought we gave ourselves a chance and we’ll try to keep getting better here.”
Ekman-Larsson scored at 17:02 of the second to tie the game, 1-1.
Aleksander Barkov added a marker into an empty net for the 3-1 final with 27 seconds left on the game clock.
Tristan Jarry made 30 saves in the loss.
“I thought we were good, played a hard game, were all over the ice and defended well,” Jarry said. “Obviously, that’s not the outcome that we wanted, but it is what the score ended up. I thought we competed. It was a good game. We need to keep that going.”
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