Florida had five different players score goals and Anthony Stolarz made 18 saves

A game that was pretty vanilla through two periods went from zero to sixty in a hurry on Sunday afternoon in Columbus.

Four goals and 45 penalty minutes would highlight a busy third period, and it was the visiting Florida Panthers coming out on top, defeating the Columbus Blue Jackets 5-2 at Nationwide Arena.

The Panthers got off to a quick start thanks to a nice cycling play on the opening shift of the game.

Sasha Barkov slid the puck to an open Gus Forsling for a quick wrist shot that beat Blue Jackets goalie Jet Greaves just 62 seconds after the opening puck drop.

Each team scored goals 22 seconds apart a little later in the period, with Yegor Chinakhov snapping a quick, long wrister by Anthony Stolarz, and then Carter Verhaeghe deflected a rising Sam Reinhart shot past Greaves moments later to put the Cats back in front.

Much of the game moved quickly to that point, with few whistles, no penalties and an abundance of zone time by the Panthers in the Columbus end.

The majority of the Blue Jackets scoring chances were coming off odd-man rushes and defensive breakdowns, a trend that would continue to the remainder of the game. 

Things heated up quickly in the opening moments of the third period when Nick Cousins took Erik Gudbranson into the boards with some force.

Initially called a five-minute major, the penalty was rescinded to a two-minute minor after the officials reviewed the replay.

Gudbranson was furious after the hit, and he’d take out his frustrations on Cousins a few minutes later.

After Cousins had dumped the puck into an open corner of the Columbus defensive zone, Gudbranson wrapped his arms around Cousins and drove him to the ice before unloading several punches on the defenseless Cousins.

Gudbranson was tossed from the game and issued 27 minutes of penalties for the play, two for instigating, five for fighting, a ten-minute misconduct for the instigator and a 10-minute game misconduct.

It took a while, but the Panthers were finally able to cash in on their seven-minute power play thanks to a great play by a tied-up Sam Bennett to poke the puck to an open Sasha Barkov.

Columbus pulled Greaves with over four minutes to go and the gamble paid off a few seconds after Verhaerghe missed a decent look at the empty net.

Dmitri Voronkov deflected a Patrik Laine pass at the top of the crease past a sprawling Stolarz to cut Florida’s lead to 3-2 with 3:49 to go.

That would be as close as the Blue Jackets would get.

A pair of empty netters by Matthew Tkachuk and Eetu Luostarinen ended all ideas of a Columbus comeback.

Here are some thoughts and observations from the Sunday afternoon tilt in Columbus:

Reinhart picked up four assists on Sunday. He’s up to 17 goals and 37 points through 27 games this season.

Niko Mikkola snuck in another assist, his eighth of the year, to give him four over his past four games.

Verhaeghe is heating up, now with goals in five of his past seven games. He’s got 13 on the season.

A solid all-around game for Forsling, who finished with a goal and an assist on three shots on goal. He was also a plus-2 and blocked a pair of shots. 

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