After three big wins, Panthers’ road trip ends with whimper in loss to Red Wings
The Florida Panthers knew it was coming. They had just walloped the Detroit Red Wings a night earlier. With the second game of a back-to-back on the horizon, they knew Detroit wasn’t going to go down easily.
“We feel good about ourselves,” forward Patric Hornqvist said, “but we can’t just sit back now because we’ve been winning lately here. We just have to keep working and keep doing the right things.”
“We’re looking at them to respond,” forward Anthony Duclair added. “That’s for sure.”
Detroit’s response on Saturday came in the second period. The Panthers couldn’t recover.
The Red Wings scored twice in the middle frame to erase an early deficit and defeat the Panthers 2-1 at Little Caesars Arena. It was the only loss on this four-game road trip for Florida, which drops to 11-3-2. Two of the Panthers’ three regulation losses this year have come against Detroit (5-12-3).
“Obviously they were going to be a hungrier team today with the performance they had yesterday,” forward Frank Vatrano said, “but I think we shot ourselves in the foot in the second period. We came out flat. ... Sometimes when you take a period off, that’s what happens in the end.”
Patrik Nemeth and Mathias Brome scored for Detroit in the second period. Nemeth’s goal, his first of the season, came on a wrist shot in the left circle through traffic and past Sergei Bobrovsky shortly after the Red Wings won a faceoff in the offensive zone. Brome’s goal came on a rebound after a Dylan Larkin shot.
“We gave them two free goals,” Panthers coach Joel Quenneville said. “To me, that was the difference.”
The two goals negated the Panthers’ first-period lead, which came when Alex Wennberg tapped the puck past Jonathan Bernier after some nifty stickwork in front of the net.
Wennberg now has five goals on the season, all of which have come in the past seven games. His goal was also the first this season by the Panthers’ second power-play unit.
Bernier stopped 38 of 39 shots on goal, including all 30 at even strength, to improve to 4-2-0 in net.
Bobrovsky stopped 25 of 27 that came his way and fell to 5-2-1 on the season. Saturday was Bobrovsky’s first loss of the season in a game in which he had a save percentage of at least .900.
Road trip recap
Even with the loss on Saturday, the Panthers outscored opponents 18-11 over the four games this road trip, which included a 6-4 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday, a 4-3 overtime win over the Carolina Hurricanes on Wednesday and a 7-2 win over Detroit on Friday.
Only three of the Panthers’ 18 goals came on the power play, with a fourth coming during the three-on-three overtime period against Carolina.
Jonathan Huberdeau tallied seven points (three goals, four assists) during the road trip and leads the team with 22 points after 16 games. Aleksander Barkov (two goals, four assists), Anthony Duclair (two goals, two assists) and Patric Hornqvist (two goals, two assists) also averaged at least one point per game during the trip.
Chris Driedger went 3-0-0 in net, stopping 89 of 98 shots he faced for a .908 save percentage and a 2.96 goals against average in the first three games of the road trip.
Close games with Detroit
Despite being on opposite ends of the standings in the Central Division, tour of the Panthers’ six games against the Red Wings so far this season have been decided by one goal.
The teams face off two more times this season, March 30 and April 1 at the BB&T Center.
Heading back home
The Panthers now return to the BB&T Center for five games over an eight-day span. It starts with their three games of the season against the Dallas Starts on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. It concludes with two games against the Hurricanes on Saturday and March 1.
This story was originally published February 20, 2021 at 7:37 PM.
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