George Richards, FHN Publisher
Anton Stralman said there were some upset players and perhaps some choice words said in the Florida Panthers locker room Monday night at Tampa Bay.
The Panthers had as big a second period as any team could hope for against the defending Stanley Cup champions, yet despite scoring four goals in the frame, Tampa Bay had stolen the momentum back and only trailed by one going into the break.
All the excitement the Panthers appeared to have pulled out of a second period in which goals were going in like quarters fed into a Ms. Pac-Man machine had been sucked away.
Florida came out with a defensive mindset to start the third having to kill off the final few seconds of an Aaron Ekblad penalty taken at 18:12 of the second.
The Panthers successfully killed it off, got the puck into the offensive zone and quickly got the momentum they had lost right back.
Radko Gudas kept the puck in the zone, threw a shot toward the net which Jonathan Huberdeau picked up and flipped it to Stralman.
Stralman worked his way toward the right circle and quickly fired it top shelf past goalie Curtis McElhinney.
That goal, 59 seconds into the third, gave the Panthers a two-goal lead lost in the previous period and really settled things down.
The Panthers ended up holding the high-flying Lightning off the scoreboard for the entirety of the third after it scored three in the second and left Tampa with a 6-4 win.
“That was a huge goal, a really big kill from our guys at the end of the second,’’ Florida goalie Chris Driedger said.
“They had just scored three goals pretty quick to make it a one-goal game. If they had evened it up it would have changed the whole dynamic of the game.”
When Stralman scored to make it 6-4, few could have thought that would be the final goal of the night for either side.
After all, there was 19:01 remaining and the two teams combined for a whopping seven goals in the second period alone.
Stralman’s goal won’t go into the books as the game-winner but it may as well have been.
“We reset a little at the intermission, tried to calm it down a little bit,” Stralman said.
“There was a lot of frustration in the room. We got a little breather. Then to get that goal, it relaxed (things), a little cushion to sit on and kind of forced their hand a little bit too. That was big.”
Coach Joel Quenneville said Florida killing off the majority of the Ekblad penalty in the final minutes of the second after giving up two quick goals was key to “stabilizing things.”
Then came the goal.
”I thought Huberdeau finding Stralman right down main street with a great shot,” Quenneville said.
“Huge goal. It gave us our composure back, we got a little loose five minutes after that, but for the last 10, I thought we really tightened it up.’’
The Panthers got scoring from all over their lineup on Tuesday night as they won in Tampa for the first time in nine tries dating back to the Gerard Gallant-coached 2016 team.
Down 1-0 in the first, a hustling Patric Hornqvist beat the Tampa goalie who came out of his net to play the puck and fed Jonathan Huberdeau standing all alone in front of an empty net.
Everything broke out in the second.
Florida scored the first three as Owen Tippett gave the Panthers the 2-1 lead with Frank Vatrano cashing in on a penalty shot and Anthony Duclair mercifully getting his first of the season.
Tampa Bay got one back at 11:46 of the second, but Sasha Barkov made it a three-goal lead again on a pretty off-balanced, off-angled shot.
Only the Lightning scored twice within a span of 48 seconds to pull within a goal to really grab the momentum of the game.
Once down 4-1 and then 5-2, the Lightning had made it a 5-4 game when Ekblad was called for hooking.
Things were not looking good for the Panthers at intermission.
We have seen the Panthers squander leads in the past to teams far less talented than the Lightning.
Heck, even Nashville rallied from a two-goal deficit in the final minutes to force OT and get a win earlier this month.
But in this third period, the Panthers were up for the challenge.
“I like how we stuck together in a real competitive game,” Quenneville said. “It was a real important game from our perspective of where we’re at in the division, needing points since everyone seems to be picking them up these days.”
Driedger, who wasn’t exactly thrilled with giving up three in the second, made 11 saves in the final 20 and was forced to make a couple of great stops against the charged up Lightning.
With 3:15 left, Keith Yandle got called for a slash on Alex Killorn as he drove to the net and all but put the puck through.
Down two, the Lightning pulled McElhinney midway through the power play giving them a 6-on-4 skater advantage.
Still, nothing.
The Panthers ended up snapping Tampa Bay’s six-game home winning streak as the Lightning were trying to set a franchise record for consecutive home wins to start a season.
Tampa Bay took 24 shot attempts in the third period to Florida’s nine.
“Our guys dialed it in,” Driedger said. “I thought we played like a team that knows how to win.”
Florida ended up not only beating the Lightning on Monday, but twice in the three-game series that started Thursday in Sunrise.
The victory Monday may not erase the sting of losing 6-1 to the Lightning on home ice over the weekend, but it certainly helps.
The Panthers are 4-0 following a loss this season. They’re not letting the last one cost them the next one and in a short season, that’s huge.
“It was a good bounceback game,’’ Quenneville said. “I thought they bounced back after the first one and we bounced back after the second one.
“We did some good things today. A lot of pucks went in the net, but when we keep it simple and play hard, I thought we had a good last 10 minutes of the game.
“Maybe we tried to manufacture stuff that wasn’t there in the second which got them back in the game, but learn off it. A lot of good things from tonight.”
On Wednesday, the Panthers play game No. 14 at Carolina hitting the quarter pole of this abbreviated, 56-game schedule in a pretty good spot.
With games only coming against divisional opponents, the Panthers had to fare better against the Lightning this season than they had in the most recent past.
Coming into Thursday, Florida had lost 10 of 12 to the Lightning.
They’re off to a pretty good start this year.
“We want to be a pretty good road team and that maybe hasn’t been the case in the past,” Stralman said.
“We’re trying to push ourselves to get more points on the road. It is such a big thing. With the division, it’s going to be tight and if you’re a good road team, you’re going to pick up a lot of points. In the end, that’s going to make a difference.”