Road winning streak hits 11 as Panthers crush Tampa Bay 9-2
Florida has not lost a road game since Dec. 18 in Calgary
Playing their third road game in four nights, the Florida Panthers couldn’t have thought of a better way to wrap up their week of travel.
The Cats jumped all over their cross-state rivals, defeating the Tampa Bay Lightning soundly by a final score of 9-2.
Interestingly enough, it was the home team got the party started thanks to a very early goal Brandon Hagel.
The speedy winger took off behind a pinching Brandon Montour and beat Niko Mikkola to the puck before sliding the puck under Sergei Bobrovsky just 24 seconds into the game.
It wouldn’t take long for Florida to start turning the tide in their favor though.
Hagel’s early tally kept Tampa in front until the 7:01 mark when a Brandon Montour point shot hit off the pants of Bolts defenseman Emil Lileberg and past goalie Andrei Vasilevsky to the game at one.
A Sam Bennett one-timer off a nice feed from Matthew Tkachuk gave the Cats their first lead of the game about four minutes later, and then a pair of late period goals by Kevin Stenlund and Gus Forsling suddenly put Florida up by three goals at the first intermission.
They didn’t stop there.
Florida came out in the second and picked up right where they left off, and it was Tkachuk leading the way.
He scored a pair of power play goals 74 seconds apart, both coming in the first 1:37 of the middle frame, to give the Panthers a commanding 6-1 lead.
Most people would think a five-goal lead would mean things would ease up a bit in the final twenty minutes, but if you did, you thought wrong.
Bennett and Verhaeghe (twice) scored in the first 4:09 of the third period, extending the Panthers lead to an eye-popping 9-1.
Here are some thoughts and observations from Saturday’s battle with the Bolts:
Montour finished the game with three points, his first multi-point outing since Dec. 16.
Tkachuk now has four goals and 13 points during a five-game points streak.
He’s up to 37 points in 19 games since January 1.
It was a near perfect night on special teams for Florida. They were 3-for-3 on the power play and killed off three of four Tampa man advantages.
Forsling is now riding a modest, three-game points streak in which he’s logged a goal and four assists.
After going 11 games without a point and 35 games with only an assist, Lomberg now has three points over his past five games.
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