Florida hasn't lost at Amalie Arena since December of 2022

The Florida Panthers picked up their first road win of the Stanley Cup Playoffs on Thursday night in Tampa Bay.

Florida defeated the Lightning 5-3 to go up 3-0 in their best-of-7 opening round playoff series.

It was a critical game in Tampa’s barn, a building that traditionally had not been kind to the Panthers, though perhaps not as much lately.

Dating back to last season, Florida has now won four consecutive games at Amalie Arena by a combined score of 21-8.

If they can make it five straight, the Panthers will celebrate just the second sweep in franchise history, and to do it against that team, in that building…yeah, it would mean a whole heck of a lot to the people who have been with and around the franchise the longest.

Let’s get to the takeaways.

Withstanding Tampa’s big push

It came as no surprise to see Tampa Bay push as hard as they could during Game 3. Falling behind 0-3 in a playoff series is almost impossible to come back from.

After an opening period in which the home team looked uncharacteristically nervous and tentative at times, the Bolts came out firing on all cylinders for the middle frame.

One thing Florida had yet to do during this series, simply because they hadn’t been in that situation yet, was to take a haymaker from the Lightning and see if they could get up off the mat.

Another box has been checked.

“On the road, you can expect the home team to have dominance in at least 10 minutes of a game,” Maurice said. “They're gonna get hot, right? They'll get going. And they did, they scored the goal very early in the second period and that's what got it cooking for them, and for 10 minutes you’re behind the play a little bit. And then we tied the game, and took the lead.”

Reino goal sparks turnaround

The Lightning scored twice in just over two minutes to go from down by one to up by one. It was the first time Tampa held a lead at any time during the series.

It lasted exactly seven minutes and two seconds.

A keep in at the blue line by Brandon Montour and a no-look, cross-ice pass by Vladimir Tarasenko set up Sam Reinhart with the puck on his stick and plenty of space in the high slot to send an absolute laser of a shot past a partially screened Andrei Vasilevskiy, tying the game and putting momentum back on Florida’s side.

“Sam Reinhart, great just to step up to the plate to get us back into that feeling of good road hockey,” Maurice said. “It doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to be ahead of it. You don't have to be analytically ahead of it. You don't have to outshoot a team. You don't have to do any of those things. You just have to stay in the game long enough to make the difference.”

Penalty kill comes up big

We knew coming into this series that special teams was going to play a major role in deciding who comes out on top.

So far, it’s been Florida’s penalty kill finding success defending Tampa Bay’s top-ranked power play.

The Lightning are now just 2-for-12 with the man advantage during the series after going 0-for-4 during Thursday’s Game 3.

Florida finished the regular season with the league’s sixth-best penalty kill, and if there is anything this team has done over the past couple years it’s take on every challenge without blinking.

“I thought the big story would be penalty killing,” Maurice said. “It's such a dominant, highly skilled power play that that would be the most important thing that we did well tonight.

“Your penalty kill won't be fantastic every night, but based on our year, you have confidence that you can always get it back, that if you have a couple of bad breaks around the net…the kill has been so good, and I thought our line holds were outstanding.”

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