Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Panthers blow 3-goal lead before escaping
Eetu Luostarinen scored 1:55 into overtime to give the Florida Panthers a 5-4 win over the Washington Capitals and the team’s 10-game start to a season.
Luostarinen’s centering pass went off a Capitals players stick and into the net, moving the Panthers to 9-0-1 with 19 points. The team’s previous best 10-game start was in 1996-97, with a 7-0-3 record and 17 points.
Florida’s Aleksander Barkov scored two goals, raising his career total to 188, tied with Olli Jokinen for the most in franchise history. Aaron Ekblad had a goal and assist, and Brandon Montour also scored for Florida.
The Panthers never gave up possession of the puck in overtime.
“I think that’s the biggest thing you can do in overtime, just hold on to the puck and make them tired,” Barkov said. “It wasn’t pretty today, but managing to get the win against a really good team, you’re going to be happy with that, but then there’s a lot of things we can work on.”
Spencer Knight stopped 25 shots after entering the game to start the second period. Sergei Bobrovsky stopped all 13 shots he faced before leaving after the first period with an upper-body injury. Bobrovsky is day-to-day, according to interim coach Andrew Brunette.
The Panthers have played three straight overtime games under Brunette, who took over last week after Joel Quenneville resigned as part of the fallout from the way Chicago handled allegations of sexual assault by a player against another coach in 2010.
“Yeah, I mean, I’ll take the points,” he said. “I think I aged again tonight a little bit, but always take the win.”
Alex Ovechkin scored his 10th goal of the season and had two assists. Connor McMichael, Tom Wilson and Daniel Sprong also scored for the Capitals.
lya Samsonov stopped 15 of 18 shots before being replaced by Vitek Vanecek in the second period. Vanecek made 13 saves.
“The guys played hard, they never stopped playing,” coach Peter Laviolette said. “We found ourselves in a game where I thought we could have had the lead at times. We got to overtime and never really got possession of the puck. It’s frustrating to not get the second point.”
McMichael scored when he grabbed a loose puck in front and tied the score at 4-all with 13:04 left in the third period.
“I didn’t see it up in the air. It dropped right in front of me. Luckily, no one else saw it,” McMichael said.