On Saturday night the Panthers looked to rebound after falling to the Philadelphia Flyers in a shootout and tie the New York Islanders for the last wild card spot in the eastern conference.
The game started out like Panther games have started out for the last couple weeks. Slow. The Florida Panthers played extremely well for the first ten minutes, besides one little slip-up.
While on the power-play, defenseman Keith Yandle played the puck off the boards in the defensive zone. He was going for a cross ice pass to Aleksander Barkov, but it was gloved down by Radek Faksa of Dallas. Radek had a small breakaway in front of Reimer. Luckily, Reimer made the save and kept the score tied at zero.
The game eventually got ugly for the Cats, as when Dallas entered the zone on a simple even man rush,
crashed the net to find a loose puck laying flat in front of the goal. In the process,
slowly skated away from Benn, leaving him all alone.
was then able to regain the puck in the corner, skate out to the face off dot, and fire it cross crease for Benn to tip it home for his 24th of the season.
The Panthers would respond though, as they went to the power play (which has been extremely hot as of late) with about 4 minutes remaining in the first. Jonathan Marchessault had the puck just about 5 feet away from the blue line, lost it, was able to regain control, and fired a cross ice pass to Jonathan Huberdeau. Huberdeau then fired one home from the face off dot that went in off the left post. It was Huberdeau’s fifth of the season, and his first power play goal so far.
The Cats and Stars traded chances in the second. A 2-on-1 developed between Thomas Vanek and Nick Bjugstad. As Vanek drew closer to the net, he was able to get the puck over to wide open Nick Bjugstad, but Bjugstad just fired it wide over the net. It seemed that was the Panthers golden chance to take the lead. Unfortunately, nothing else really took place in the second. The score would end one a piece for both sides.
Like the second, the majority of the third period was Goal-less (and penalty-less for that matter). Again, there were a couple chances for the Panthers, like when Thomas Vanek just couldn’t put it home as he wrapped his stick around Stars goaltender Kari Lehtonen. The Cats just couldn’t buy a goal at this point of the game and would have to hope for a possible overtime goal.
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Then everything fell apart for the Cats. With just over a minute to go, Vincent Trocheck just couldn’t get the puck out of the defensive zone. He was able to get it past a Dallas defender, but Jamie Benn was able to knock it out of mid air before it went offside. Benn then skated a little into the zone, stopped, and wired a cross pass to streaking Stars defenseman John Klingberg, who would rifle one home bar down, to make it 2-1 Dallas with 1:07 to go.
The Panthers had a few okay chances in the last minute, but came up dry and empty handed. There was some controversy after the game as interim head coach Tom Rowe called out Reilly Smith for being out of position on the Jamie Benn goal in the first period.
The Cats are still only 2 points out of the last wild card spot though, which is held by the New York Islanders. The Islanders do have one game in hand, but their schedule is going to be really tough in the next 4-5 games, as they go on a tough Western Conference road trip.
Florida’s next game is Tuesday vs the New York Rangers, which is the game where Olli Jokinen will be honored, and his number will more than likely be retired.