Capitals rally late, stun Panthers, 4-2

SUNRISE, Fla. — T.J. Oshie didn’t see his goahead goal get into the net. The Florida Panthers didn’t see this coming, either.

And right away, the top overall seed in the Stanley Cup playoffs finds itself in some trouble.

Oshie scored the go-ahead goal midway through the third period, Vitek Vanecek stopped 30 shots and the Washington Capitals rallied past the top-seeded Panthers 4-2 in the opener of their Eastern Conference first-round series Tuesday night.

“It’s one game,” Capitals coach Peter Laviolette said. “Our guys played hard tonight. We’ve got to regroup tomorrow and get back to work.”

Tom Wilson, Evgeny Kuznetsov and Lars Eller also scored for Washington, which trailed 2-1 going into the third period. Teams had been 0-39-1 against Florida in the regular season when trailing after 40 minutes, 0-22-0 when doing so on the Panthers’ home ice.

The Capitals must have ignored those numbers. Here’s a number not worth ignoring: The last time Florida led a playoff series 1-0 was in 1997, and the Panthers wasted a chance to change that on Tuesday night.

“We let one slip away,” said Florida defenseman Aaron Ekblad, who returned after missing the final quarter of the regular season with a knee injury. “I’d like to think we’re going to learn a valuable lesson from this.”

Kuznetsov tied the game after a Florida turnover with 11:46 left, then Oshie got behind the defense and tapped Nicklas Backstrom’s pinpoint pass by Sergei Bobrovsky for what became the winner 2:23 later.

“Typically Nicky fashion, sauced it through a guy’s legs and right on my tape,” Oshie said. “I just redirected. Didn’t see it go in, so he had to come tell me that we scored. It’s always nice to get that go-ahead goal.”

Eller wrapped it up with an empty-netter with 49 seconds left.

Claude Giroux and Sam Bennett scored for Florida.