On Thursday night, Victor Hedman scored in overtime to give the Tampa Bay Lightning a 3-2 victory over the Florida Panthers.
Recap
The game started out in Florida’s favor, as they outshot Tampa Bay 13-4 in the first period. Patric Hornqvist would score the game’s first goal, slipping a backhander past Vasilevskiy on a nice pass from Alex Wenneberg.
The second period was still very much dominated by Florida in terms of shots. But Tampa Bay got a power-play opportunity, and took full advantage of it at 13:28. Andrei Vasilvesky came out of his goal crease and fed a pass to Alex Killorn, who would tie things up at one apiece.
The third period was still a dog fight. Florida would take the lead seven minutes into the period, with a goal by Anthony Duclair on a highlight-reel pass from Jonathan Huberdeau. Two minutes later, however, Tampa would get the game-tying goal. Ross Colton would receive the goal, with Mikhail Sergachev and Blake Coleman getting the assist.
60 minutes would not be enough to decide this game, as the game would go on to 3-on-3 overtime. Florida would start the game off with the first shot, but the period eventually turned into a track match. Florida got a perfect chance but was stopped by Vasilevskiy. A few seconds later, Victor Hedman got past Jonathan Huberdeau and scored 54 seconds into overtime.
Despite losing, Florida doubled the Bolts in shots on goal, 38-19. But the Panthers are now one point back from first place, whereas the Lightning are tied with the Hurricanes for first in the Central Division.
Anthony Duclair: “I think it was a pretty solid game all-around. All four lines were playing pretty good and we had some solid goaltending. We came up short, but there’s a lot of positives to take out of this one. We knew it was going to be a grind against these guys.”
Next Up
The Lightning and Panthers will go head to head again on Saturday. Puck drop is scheduled for 7:00 PM EST.