In front of their largest crowd of the year, Panthers tie NHL record with 11-0 home start
The Florida Panthers came out of the locker room after the second intermission Thursday and knew they were going to score. It has reached this point for the Panthers, who still haven’t lost at home and have more points than anyone else in the league: They were one win away from tying an NHL record and could feel the game-tying goal coming. They were playing too well not to.
It took less than four minutes for the Panthers to tie the game and keep their chances at a record-tying win alive. Sam Bennett scored on a power play and Florida headed to overtime against the Philadelphia Flyers. In the extra period, Aaron Ekblad finally delivered the Panthers a 2-1 win and the 15,545 at FLA Live Arena — Florida’s largest crowd of the year — celebrated an accomplishment unlike any Sunrise has ever seen.
The Panthers have now won 11 in a row at home to start the season, tying an NHL record held by the 1963-64 Blackhawks. On Saturday, they’ll have a chance to make the record their own when they host the last-place Seattle Kraken for their first ever meeting with the expansion team.
“There is a big feeling of pride and joy in the locker room after that win,” Bennett said. “It wasn’t an easy one and we’re proud of how we’re playing at home. It’s a lot of fun playing in front of our fans and getting wins at home.”
Florida (14-2-3) has mostly won at home with blowouts and offensive eruptions. The Panthers are averaging 4.5 goals per game at home and winning by an average margin of 2.4.
This was not one of those games, even if Florida mostly dominated in this sort of manner. The Panthers outshot the Flyers, 46-33, and finished with a 56-27 edge in scoring chances and a 22-12 advantage in high-danger chances. They even hit the post four times in the first two periods before going to the third trailing 1-0. One slip up in the first period gave Philadelphia (8-6-4) a breakaway chance and Flyers winger Joel Farabee beat Sergei Bobrovsky to turn a potential rout into a grind-it-out battle between playoff contenders.
The Panthers, of course, have won plenty of those this year, too. They’re now 3-0 in overtime at home this season.
“I just felt it was going to be one of those games. It was going to be a grind. I really thought we stuck to the plan,” interim coach Andrew Brunette said. “We figured sooner or later it was going to go in.”
Bennett finally gave Florida the breakthrough it was waiting on with 16:01 left in regulation. The Panthers got their first power play with 16:25 left and cashed in 24 seconds later when winger Anthony Duclair whipped a pass from the right wing across the front of the net to Bennett, who tapped in the game-tying goal. It ended a seven-game drought on the power play and was ultimately enough to get Florida into overtime because of how Bobrovsky was playing.
The goaltender finished with 32 saves on 33 shots to lift his save percentage to .940. He also leads the league in high-danger save percentage and helped stop 11 more high-danger chances Thursday.
“Those type of games,” Bobrovsky said, “it’s fun to play, as well, when it’s all tight.”
In overtime, he denied Philadelphia right wing Cam Atkinson on a breakaway right before Ekblad put home the winner. With 2:21 left in overtime, the star defenseman fired the game-winning goal past Flyers goaltender Martin Jones at the end of a pretty two-man passing play with left wing Jonathan Huberdeau.
Bennett also provided the secondary assist on Ekblad’s goal, just as Ekblad did on his.
“We just come in waves. We never feel run out of confidence on the bench,” Ekblad said. “I feel like we’re just always in the game mentally and we’re never worried about the score. We just play.”
In the end, it was a result the Panthers deserved and — a moment Florida has, too.
For nearly all of their existence, the Panthers have been irrelevant in the championship picture. They went to the 1996 Stanley Cup Finals in their second season of existence and haven’t even won a postseason series since. They routinely rank in the bottom quarter of the league in attendance, which is understandable considering they’ve only been to the traditional 16-team Stanley Cup playoffs six times in their 28 seasons of existence.
Even in Florida’s worst years, bad attendance still meant 13,000 or 14,000 people in the building on most nights, though, and they’ve waited for a team like this one.
Ekblad couldn’t help but smile when the record was mentioned to him. Typically, hockey players insist achievements in October or November don’t really matter. In a place still learning to love hockey, this record does.
“Tying that is awesome. It’s a very cool thing,” Ekblad said. “We’re happy to do it in front of our fans and we hope to get another one.”
This story was originally published November 24, 2021 at 9:51 PM.
