Panthers give best shot, can’t pry Lightning out of 1st place
With first place in the Central Division on the line, thePanthers and Tampa Bay Lightning needed more than 60 minutes to find a winner Thursday in Tampa.
Less than a minute into overtime, Victor Hedman delivered the Lightning a 3-2 victory.
Hedman fielded a long pass from Tampa Bay winger Alex Killorn in the opening minute of overtime and beat goaltender Chris Driedger on a breakaway with 4:06 left to top the Panthers in the opener of a two-game series between the division rivals.
The Lightning’s win keeps
Tampa Bay atop the Central, in a tie with the Carolina Hurricanes, while Florida drops a point back of the two firstplace teams.
The in-state matchup — a rare opportunity on national television for the Panthers — delivered on the hype, though.
The teams brawled in the waning seconds of the second period. They traded goals less than three minutes apart in the third — a go-ahead score for the Panthers, followed by a game-tying answer. The Panthers and Lightning needed overtime to decide a victor, and Tampa Bay delivered the game-winner just seconds after defenseman MacKenzie Weegar missed on a good
chance.
Right wing Patric Hornqvist scored in the first period to give the Panthers a 1-0 lead and Killorn answered with a power-play goal in the second to keep the two sides knotted deep into the second.
Radko Gudas’ hit with about two minutes left in the second kicked up the temperature. The defenseman threw a check at Killorn in front of Tampa Bay’s bench and Killorn tried to jump out of the way. They banged legs and Killorn helicoptered through the air. The Lightning griped and, a little more than a minute later, tensions boiled over.
Driedger snared a shot, covered the puck with 44.4 seconds left in the period and Tampa Bay forward Barclay Goodrow threw one late cross check at defenseman Brandon Montour. Tempers flared.
Markus Nutivaara went at Goodrow in Montour’s defense and Lighting winger Blake Coleman pried the defenseman away from his teammate. Florida’s Mason Marchment jumped into a tussle with Goodrow. Nutivaara went at it with Coleman. When Tampa Bay defenseman Erik Cernak pulled Marchment away from Goodrow, star center Aleksander Barkov hopped in to fight with the offender.
When it ended, Florida was on the power play and in position to set the tone for the final 20 minutes.
The third period turned into a procession of heavyweight blows in the form of two dazzling goals less than three minutes apart.
With 12:47 left, Anthony Duclair put Florida ahead 2-1 off an assist by Jonathan Huberdeau. The two wingers dashed into the offensive zone on a 2-on-1 and Huberdeau held up as he crossed into the left faceoff circle. The All-Star left wing spun around, slid a backhand pass across the ice and Duclair buried the goahead goal past Andrei Vasilevskiy.
A few minutes later, Tampa Bay answered to ultimately force overtime. The Lightning cycled the puck around the offensive zone on a long possession and Tampa Bay defenseman Mikhail Sergachev launched a pass from the right point across the ice to Ross Colton on the doorstep. The Lighting center stuck out his stick and deflected in a game-tying goal with 10:03 to go.
Vasilevskiy, who finished with 36 saves on 38 shots, blanked Florida for the next 10 minutes. Driedger, who stopped 16 of 19 shots, did the same. Amalie Arena was rewarded with overtime in a playoff-type matchup and, soon after, a victory for the home team.