2 days Ago By Miami Herald
Joel Farabee scored on a rebound for the Philadelphia Flyers and, for the first time in two weeks, the Florida Panthers trailed. For nearly three weeks, the Panthers have been perhaps the hottest team in the NHL, racking up wins on two continents to charge to the top of the Eastern Conference standings, and yet a night like Saturday was always going to happen eventually. Florida played less-than-perfect hockey and wound up in a dogfight with the lowly Flyers, and yet it still didn’t matter: The Panthers rallied to win 4-3 in a shootout for their seventh win in a row.
“When we get into tough situations, this team doesn’t panic,” defenseman Nate Schmidt said. “You get that sense from this group that they have a lot of confidence in what they do and what we do. That’s something that you don’t just overnight have.
That’s been built over years.” Florida’s win against Philadelphia was its first on the winning streak to not come by multiple goals, but the Panthers (11-3-1) have still outscored opponents by 15 goals on this winning streak. They’re less than five months removed from winning their first Stanley Cup, with every excuse to get off to a slow start and put all their focus on the end of the season, and instead they’re playing about as well as they have at any point in the last few years.
Their seven-game winning streak is already their second longest of the past two seasons, and they still have three more games left on the current homestand to keep padding it. “We don’t really look at the streaks,” center Sam Bennett said. “We just try and treat every game the same, and our team’s pretty good that, getting up for games that are tough to get up for and play the same style of hockey.
” Their showdown with the Flyers was ripe to be one of those nights when they might slip. Philadelphia (5-9-1) went up 1-0 in just 4:57 and the Flyers outshot Florida, 24-17, through the first two periods. Although the Panthers went into the second intermission tied 2-2 with Philadelphia, both of Florida’s goals came from defensemen — offense was not easy to come by for the Panthers.
Even so, Florida got the game into overtime and then Sergei Bobrovsky got the game to a shootout — the first of the year for the Panthers. The Flyers generated four breakaways against Bobrovsky in the five-minute, 3-on-3 extra period and the star goaltender turned aside every one of them. Florida forced a shootout despite getting outshot and generating fewer scoring chances in three of four periods, including overtime.
“You don’t see that many point-blank saves very often,” Bennett said. Quipped Bobrovsky: “That was a fun challenge.” In the shootout, star center Aleksander Barkov scored on the first try to put the Panthers up 1-0 in the shootout and then Bobrovsky stopped three of the Flyers’ first four shots to bring up Evan Rodrigues.
Already with two assists in regulation, Rodrigues delivered in the winner in the shootout, sliding the puck to his left and lifting a shot past Philadelphia goaltender Samuel Ersson, and Bobrovsky stopped one last chance to give Florida yet another win. “In those games where you know your behind it a little bit, your hands aren’t right there, nothing’s easy,” coach Paul Maurice said, “you’ve just got to stay in the fight.”.
