Staal ends his long scoreless drought
Veteran defenseman Marc Staal ended a 75game goal drought, captain Aleksander Barkov also scored and the Florida Panthers held on to beat the Washington Capitals 6-3 Thursday night in a big game in the Eastern Conference wild-card race.
Florida pulled even with Washington at 62 points. The Capitals are ahead in the standings because they’ve played one fewer game.
Staal scored for the first time since March 15, 2022, when he was with Detroit.
Jeremy Swayman made 29 saves for his second shutout of the season and seventh of his career, Patrice Bergeron had a goal and an assist and Boston defeated Nashville.
Brad Marchand, Craig Smith, Derek Forbort and Trent Frederic also scored for the Bruins, winners of three of four. Nick Foligno and Hampus Lindholm each had two assists.
Juuse Saros made 25 saves for Nashville. The Predators have dropped three of four coming out of the All-star break.
Kent Johnson’s thirdperiod goal was the tiebreaker, Joonas Korpisalo had 36 saves and Columbus rallied to beat Winnipeg.
The Blue Jackets overcame a terrible first period, tying a season-low with just two shots on goal in the frame. They tied the game in the second period and moved ahead at 9:40 of the third with Johnson’s shot through a screen seconds after a power play had ended.
Kyle Connor scored for the Jets.
Seth Jarvis had his first career hat trick and Carolina scored three times in the first five minutes of the third period in a win over Montreal.
Jarvis scored in the first and third periods for his first multigoal game of the season and capped his night with a shorthanded goal with 19.8 seconds left.