Florida was excellent on special teams, scoring four power play goals and going 6-for-6 on the PK

A night full of scoring and skirmishes ended with smiles for the Florida Panthers. 

Coming off a pair of frustrating losses, the Panthers arrived in Ottawa looking to treat the contest like playoff game. 

The home team did not match Florida's intensity, and the Cats dominated Ottawa for much of the night while skating to a convincing 5-0 victory. 

Florida couldn’t have asked for a better start to build off of. 

An early power play would yield a 1-0 lead before the game was 90 seconds old thanks to Sam Reinhart picking up his 14th tally of the year.

By the midway point of the opening period, Florida was outshooting the Senators 9-1.

Things evened out by the time the period ended, at least in terms of end-to-end play, but it wouldn’t last.

That’s because the Panthers special teams dominance would continue in a big way during the second period.

After killing their third penalty of the game, Florida notched back-to-back power play goals by Reinhart and Sam Bennett.

Reinhart’s second goal would be challenged for offside, and while it certainly appeared the play was not legal, there was no clear replay evidence, so the officials had to stick with the call on the ice.

Bennett’s goal would come on the resulting penalty for the failed challenge.

Ottawa’s understandable frustrations starting coming out at the end of the second period when about a dozen players came together on the ice after the final buzzer had sounded.

Nothing major came from the skirmish except a Senators power play to open the third, but Florida continued its strong run of penalty kills and kept the home team off the scoreboard.

Things got heated again when Sens forward Zack MacEwen went after Tkachuk, taking him down with a shot to the head that would land him a match penalty.

Tkachuk was finishing a check on Travis Hamonic and MacEwen clearly did not like it, though his response will likely cost him a couple games and a few bucks.

Another full ice brawl would lead to the officials giving every player on the ice a ten minute misconduct, but by then it was 4-0 Panthers on a goal by Carter Verhaeghe and the game was beyond reach for anything but more tomfoolery.

By the time the game was over, 13 players had been handed misconduct penalties and 167 penalty minutes had been issued.

Florida, meanwhile, skated off with a 5-0 victory.

Here are some thoughts and observations from Monday’s tilt in Ottawa:

Sergei Bobrovsky came up with several big saves while recording his second shutout of the year. He finished with 20 stops, including four of the high danger variety.

It was a much-needed night of success by the Panthers special teams. They finished 4-for-7 on the power play and a perfect 6-for-6 on the penalty kill.

Bennett had an incredibly effective game when looking at the advanced metrics. Scoring chances were 7-1 in favor of Florida when he was on the ice while high danger chances were 4-0, according to Natural Stat Trick.

Reinhart’s two goals moved him back into a tie for the NHL lead with 15.

Sasha Barkov’s assist on Reinhart’s first goal, was the 400th of his career.  

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