A dominant first period and a three-goal lead had the Florida Panthers feeling a bit too good about cruising toward their first victory of the season on Friday night.
“You feel comfortable, but I think we can’t feel too comfortable,” forward Jonathan Huberdeau said.
The Panthers blew that lead and allowed the tying goal with 85 seconds left in regulation before Huberdeau scored the shootout winner to beat the Washington Capitals 6-5 and end a four-game season-opening skid.
Photo: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY
Huberdeau and Vincent Trocheck each had a goal and two assists and scored in the shootout to give Florida a badly needed boost.
“We needed to get into the win column,” Trocheck said.
Florida has been a team of floodgates this season, scoring and allowing three consecutive goals for the second game in a row. This time, they went from a 1-all tie to being up 4-1 on goals by Evgenii Dadonov, Colton Sceviour and Jared McCann, before they lost it when Washington’s Brett Connolly, Jakub Vrana and Devante Smith-Pelly all beat James Reimer in a span of less than 12 minutes.
In a wacky, back-and-forth game that became a battle of backup goaltenders, the Panthers got the one or two saves that they needed to get over the hump. Michael Hutchinson stopped 10 of the 11 shots that he faced in regulation and overtime, and made a couple of more saves in the shootout — and shootout goals by captain Aleksander Barkov, Trocheck and Huberdeau sent them home happy.
“It’s a sense of relief, for sure,” said Huberdeau, who scored a 5-on-3 power-play goal with 50.2 seconds left in the second period that gave Florida a 5-4 lead.
Washington starter Braden Holtby got the hook after allowing four goals on 11 shots in the first period.
The move to Copley to start the second period sparked the Capitals, who beat Reimer four times on 20 shots to send him to the bench.
“We found a way to win tonight,” Florida coach Bob Boughner said. “We talked about winning the first game and how good it’s going to feel, get the monkey off our back a little bit. Now I think we can move ahead. It would’ve been tough losing that game.”
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