Panthers offense overpowers Flyers as Florida earns fourth win in five games
Watch out, NHL.
The Florida Panthers are continuing to heat up.
The Panthers’ offense, despite being held to just 26 shots on goal, was on full display once again in their 5-2 win over the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday at the BB&T Center, their fourth win in their past five games. Florida, with 27 points on the season thanks to its 11-5-5 record, now sits in second place in the Atlantic Division, one point ahead of the Montreal Canadiens and four behind the Boston Bruins.
Colton Sceviour, Brett Connolly, Aleksander Barkov, Jonathan Huberdeau and Mike Hoffman scored for the Panthers, while Sergei Bobrovsky saved 35 of 37 shots on goal against him.
“We’re a confident team, there’s no question,” Connolly said. “Guys are making plays. Just seeing us get rewarded has been good. Everybody has a pretty good idea of their role 21 games in and everyone’s contributing.”
Tuesday marked the fifth time in 21 games that Florida has tallied at least five goals.
And their first four against the Flyers (10-7-4) came in a 20-minute stretch spanning the middle of the first period and the first half of the second period after the Panthers found themselves in an early 1-0 hole.
▪ Mike Matheson jumped up in the neutral zone and took a pass from Brett Connolly around in the offensive zone. He waited for Sceviour and fed him in stride. Sceviour then ripped a long slap shot from the left side through traffic and past Flyers goaltender Carter Hart. 1-1 with 9:22 left in the first period.
▪ Less than two minutes later, Connolly took a pass from Vincent Trocheck to the right of the net. His shot from behind the red line ricocheted off Hart’s mask and into the net. 2-1 Panthers with 7:30 left in the first period. It was Connolly’s eighth goal of the season.
▪ With 13:14 left in the second period, top-line center Barkov rebounded a long Evgenii Dadonov shot in front of the net and flicked it in for the 3-1 advantage. It was career goal No. 142 for Barkov, tying Nathan Horton for the fifth-most in Panthers history. Stephen Weiss, with 145, is fourth.
▪ Huberdeau made it 4-1 on a wrist shot to Hart’s short side with 9:37 left in the second period.
Hoffman added an empty-net goal with 2:32 left in regulation to close scoring.
“It was good to see everyone chip in,” Connolly said.
Travis Sanheim and Morgan Frost scored for the Flyers. Hart was pulled from the net for Brian Elliott after giving up the goal to Huberdeau.
Fight!
Huberdeau went to the dressing room with about three minutes left in the second period after taking a high stick to the face from Flyers defenseman Philippe Myers.
The two pushed and shoved briefly to the side of the Flyers’ net before Myers’ high stick left Huberdeau with blood coming out of his mouth and forced linesmen Jesse Marquis and Darren Gibbs to separate the two.
Myers was given a minor penalty for cross-checking and a double-minor for the high stick. Huberdeau was given a cross-checking minor penalty. All told, it resulted in a four-minute power play for the Panthers.
Huberdeau was back on the ice at the start of the third period.
He’s back
Dominic Toninato’s time back in the American Hockey League was short-lived. The Panthers recalled the fourth-line forward Monday from the Springfield Thunderbirds, their AHL affiliate, after waiving Dryden Hunt and loaning him to the Thunderbirds.
Toninato scored a goal and averaged 8:47 ice time during his three starts in his first stint with the Panthers this year from Nov. 7-10 when Noal Acciari was injured.
“You’ve got to take it a day at a time,” Toninato said. “You’ve got to keep working, keep trying to get better and show them what you’ve got.”
This story was originally published November 19, 2019 at 9:33 PM.
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