The Florida Panthers beat the Columbus Blue Jackets 4-3 in a SO on Tuesday night.
1st Period
The Panthers came out flat and surrendered a Kevin Stenlund goal within the first 5 minutes. The Panthers didn’t look much better through the next few minutes as they gave up another goal, scored by Alexander Texier. Up to this point, Columbus had two goals on two shots. Being down 2-0 must have sparked something in the Panthers as the next 10 minutes would be very good for them. Anton Stralman drew a slashing penalty on Nick Foligno. The Panthers powerplay would be good, but not enough to score, but a minute after the penalty expired, Carter Verhaeghe would score to cut the Columbus lead in half.
2nd Period
The Panthers would dominate play in the 2nd. Alexander Barkov would score less than 4 minutes into the period to tie the game up 2-2. Eetu Luostarinen would draw a penalty on David Savard and the powerplay would do well, but not score. Soon after, Radko Gudas would catch Mikko Koivu up high with his stick, and the Panthers would have to kill a penalty, in which they did.
3rd Period
17 seconds into the 3rd period, the Panthers were on the powerplay. But things didn’t start well when Cam Atkinson scored a shorthanded goal. Fast forwarding to the final seconds of the game, the Panthers had an empty net being down 3-2. But with 3 seconds left, Patric Hornqvist scored the game tying goal to force overtime.
Shootout
The 5-round shootout ended up with a Florida Panthers win. Patric Hornqvist, who forced overtime in the final seconds with his game-tying goal, ended the game with a game-winner. Jonathun Huberdeau also scored in the shootout for the Panthers.
Recap
The Florida Panthers got the win over the Columbus Blue Jackets, despite poor play from Sergei Bobrovsky once again. Bobrovsky who was facing his former team, stopped 19 shots. Meanwhile, Bobrovsky’s former backup Joonas Korpisalo, had 28 saves, including big stops in 3-on-3 OT.
The Panthers stay undefeated, and have their first 3-0 start to a season in franchise history.
“Our start has been really good,” said Hornqvist, who had the game winning goal. “We won the first two home games with the little ups and downs, and then today we play our best hockey so far. We were down the whole game and we find a way to win. So just keep going, keep coming to the rink happy and try to get better.”