In Sunrise,Zach Whitecloud opened the scoring for the Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday, but the Florida Panthers closed out the offense with four unanswered goals in a 4-1 win.
Aleksander Barkov hit for a goal, his 200th career NHL marker, in the Panthers win.
“It feels great,” Barkov said. “Those are the milestones you’re going to think about after your career. But really happy to get it out of the way. Playing on this team and these great players, I’m really happy.”
Sam Bennett picked up a pair of goals in the win.
“It’s a cool milestone to hit,” Bennett said. “I’m playing with confidence right now. I’ve been playing with great players all year and getting a lot of opportunities. I’m having a blast right now.”
The Panthers improved to 30-9-5.
“We have a lot of confidence at home,” Panthers head coach Andrew Brunette said. “I really believe we feed off the crowd. Tonight had an amazing feel. It felt a little bit like a playoff game there. We hope we can keep it going. It’s a pretty good number. But we’ve still got a lot of hockey left.”
Spencer Knight made 24 saves in the Florida win.
“I thought we did a good job of generating opportunities,” Whitecloud said. “They do a good job of having you in your own end and making you defend. We had some good looks, they just didn’t go in.”
The Golden Knights dropped to 25-16-3.
“I saw a lot of effort and a little bit of a lack of execution,” Vegas head coach Pete DeBoer said. “We were just off a little bit.
“We had a couple guys just coming back, so you expect some of that
Mason Marchment added a single marker for the Panthers.
Robin Lehner made 28 saves in the Vegas loss.
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